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THE LIVING ATONEMENT 



The Living Atonement 



John B. Champion, M. A., B. D. 



"He is the propitiation for our sins " (i John 2 : 2) 
"Who gave himself for our sins" (Gat. 1 : 4) 
"He ever liveth to make intercession " (Heb. f : 2j) 




The Griffith & Rowland Press 

Philadelphia 
Boston Chicago St. Louis 



V\\o 






Copyright 1910 by 
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 



Published June, 1910 



©CU368365 



THE MEMORY OF 
OUR DEAR CHILD 

Helen 3ean Cbampion 

WHOSE PRECIOUS LIFE PASSED 

OUT TO GOD AT THE TIME 

OF THE COMPLETING 

OF THIS BOOK 



FOREWORD 

Vast, infinitely vast and equally deep is the ocean of 
truth. Whether great or small, there is no sea which 
is not somewhere breaking into waves. It may be 
that beyond the narrow bounds of our present hori- 
zon the ocean of truth lies restful in a glassy calm. 
Here, at least, it breaks into the billows of human 
thinking. Waves do not wear out the sea. Book 
may follow book as wave follows wave ; but the old 
ocean of truth is as full and boundless as ever. 
Along the shores of time the wavelets of our think- 
ing die; but the majestic deep of divine truth rolls 
on as before. 

An age characterized by increasing regard for the 
word of God cannot fail to be one of religious 
progress; and the present is peerlessly prolific in 
books on the Bible. Never will the Scriptures be 
classed with effete literature, for more of God is in 
them than in any other book. Man cannot outgrow 
the means of his growth ; and the Book of books 
is necessary to his religious development. Advance 
is never away from it, but into it. The altar fires of 
earth blaze up and die down ; but the same sun that 
greeted the wondering eyes of the first man shines 
on undimmed in the heavens. So we have the flick- 

vii 



viii Foretvord 

ering rays of religious books ; and we have the sun 
of literature, the Bible. New books are constantly 
replacing those whose light has waned. There is 
but one book, the light of which has never failed 
us. All others tend to embers and ashes. 

In the nature of the case the word of God must 
be our standard of authority on the subject of the 
atonement. It is in God's light that we see his 
light ; and he who is the Light of the world has left 
us the light of his word. The faces of all the 
Christian centuries have been agleam from the un- 
consumed burning on Calvary ; but each age has had 
to catch its own reflection of this light of redemp- 
tion. To reflect the rays of the atonement is to be 
transfigured by them; to interpret Christ's work of 
salvation is to impart therewith one's own person- 
ality. The more important thing, however, is not 
the form of the reflecting face ; it is this light divine. 
Soon we disappear into the silent, lone, mysterious 
darkness, and others replace us. There are new 
reflections from new faces, but the light is ever the 
same. The greatest service possible in a book on 
the atonement is in furnishing men with the incen- 
tive to behold for themselves the living light. 

Any one tracing through the last century the 
discussions on the subject of the atonement, finds 
that the farther back he goes the less are they in 
touch with the thought of to-day. Because we 
are not living in the summer-time in which these 
flowers blossomed, we see not the beauty in which 



Foreword ix 

they bloomed; and fail to catch the perfume which 
they then distilled. The thistle blossoms of this 
year are more fragrant by far than the dried roses 
of last year. The thorniest book of present-day 
discussion has power of contact with this age, which 
is wanting in the best books of bygone days. The 
dead past and the living present are separatedby a 
continual burial process. Even the leaves of the 
theological tree reach their autumn. They would 
not die and silently flutter down, if their work were 
not done ; yet it may not all be done when they fall. 
They may turn to mould, and their elements enter 
again into the life of this mighty mangrove tree, 
and bud forth anew in numberless, verdant, breath- 
ing fronds. 

For a long time no statement of the atonement has 
met with general acceptance; nevertheless, a new 
treatment of the subject, adapted to our own day, is 
confidently expected. At a recent religious congress 
one of the subjects discussed was: "The Doctrine 
of the Atonement in Terms of Modern Thought." 

A report of the discussion said : 

" For all the rest (eight of the nine speakers) the 
old terms had lost all meaning or been modified 
out of all resemblance to their historic significance. 
. . The new way of thinking is gathering an impulse, 
an intensity, a passion of its own. We are no longer 
to be content with saying, ' The atonement is too 
large for us ; we have no theory of it ; we can have 
none.' A new doctrine, ethical, psychological, soci- 



x Foreword 

ological, biological, and all the rest — still looming 
shadowy in the mist — but looming large and draw- 
ing rapidly near, begins to be discernible. To what- 
ever else they were indifferent, no one of these 
speakers was indifferent to Christ. He commandb 
not less, but ever more completely the love and 
allegiance of his disciples. We can only wait and 
hope." 1 

It is due to say that the material of this book came 
and took form after years of wandering in a jungle. 
The attempt to hew a way through the forest of the 
theories of the atonement was of no avail. Utterly 
lost in the heart of this vast continent, much time 
was spent traveling in a circle. At length a clear 
path was discovered. Its direction is as follows: 

JESUS CHRIST MADE ATONEMENT BY HIS DEATH IN 
THAT HIS DEATH MADE HIM ATONEMENT. 

In acknowledging help received in the preparation 
of this book, it is difficult to know where to begin or 
where to end. The list of authors, teachers, and 
friends to whom unpayable debt is owed, would; 
fill the book itself. In the literary revision of the 
text the assistance of a lifelong friend, William T. 
Daley, of 26 Broadway, New York City, and of, 
another friend, Rev. Charles H. Emerson, M. A., 
of Brantford, Ontario, must be mentioned. While 
" Words pay no debts," one does owe the acknowl- 
edgment that back of his efforts are the hidden props 
of many God-given friends. t b c 

» W. B. Matteson, D. D., Baptist Congress 1908. (New York "Examiner.") 



CONTENTS 



Pages 

Foreword vii 



Chapter One. Theological Evolution. 



Progress. I. Truth and Theology. II. Evolution 
Marked by Change in Point of Attention. III. The 
System Stage of Theology. IV. The Critical Stage. 
V. The Positive Stage. 

Chapter Two. Critical Theology and Idealism 15 

The Richness of Theology Depends upon Source 
and Spirit. I. An Illustration of This in Preach- 
ing. II. Dangers of Critical Theology. III. The 
Effect of Idealism upon Criticism. 

Chapter Three. Religious Authority and Criticism 31 

Two Interpretations of Authority. I. The Subject- 
ive-objective Nature of Authority in Experience. 
II. The Relational Nature and Essential Element 
of Authority. III. Three Operative Elements. IV. 
Criticism of the Standards of Authority. 

Chapter Four. Positive Theology and the Atone- 
ment 51 

The Present Need of a Positive Theology. I. The 
Meaning of Positive Theology. II. Christ the 
Center and Substance of its Thought. III. The 
Atonement its Central Doctrine, Because of its 
Practical Nature. IV. Preparation for its Study. 



xii Contents 

Pages 

Chapter Five. Theories of the Atonement 69 

Proper Attitude Toward Them. I. Due Apprecia- 
tion of the Theories. II. Their Relation to Each 
Other. III. To the Atonement Itself. 

Chapter Six. The Christian Conflict and the 

Sabellian Compromise 87 

The Doctrines of the Atonement and of Christ's 
Deity. I. Causes of the Present Conflict. II. 
Meaning of Deity and Divinity. III. The Sabel- 
lian Compromise as to Christ's Deity. 

Chapter Seven. Personality and the Trinity 101 

The Transitionary Condition of Theology. I. De- 
fects of Personality Named as Fundamentals. II. 
Consciousness, Social Nature, and Inseparability of 
Personality. III. The Will and Mystery of the 
Trinity. 

Chapter Eight. The Deity of Christ 117 

Defense of the Doctrine. I. The Argument of 
Experience. II. Faith and Reason. III. The Proof 
Progressive. IV. Conclusive Facts of Christian 
Experience as to the Deity of Christ. 

Chapter Nine. The Meaning of Sin 133 

The Fact of Sin. I. Its Existence. II. Its Power. 
III. Its Relation to Christ and God. IV. Its Char- 
acter and wrong. 

Chapter Ten. The Meaning of Atonement 159 

Difficulty in Language. I. Difficulties of Defining. 

II. The Definition of the Term " Atonement." 

III. The Atonement of Christ. 



Contents xiii 

Pages 

Chapter Eleven. Christ Our Atonement 175 

Christ the Substance of the Atonement. I. The 
Teaching of Scripture on the Subject. II. Con- 
crete Atonement. III. The Relation of the Atone- 
ment in Person to the Atonement in Death. 

Chapter Twelve. The Necessity of Atonement 185 

Scripture Teaching on this Subject. I. The Prac- 
tical Necessity. II. The Necessity of Existence. 
III. Of Divine Satisfaction. 

Chapter Thirteen. Fatherhood, Forgiveness, and 

Atonement 203 

The Relations of the Atonement. I. The Relation 
of God to Sin. II. To Law. III. To Man. IV. 
Atonement and Fatherhood. V. Atonement and 
Forgiveness. 

Chapter Fourteen. The Identification of Christ 

with Sin 221 

Difficulty of Apprehending Spiritual Processes. I. 
The Experience in Gethsemane. II. The Fact of 
Dereliction. III. The Process of Identification 
with Sin. 

Chapter Fifteen. The Divine Experience in Atone- 
ment 243 

The Atonement the Plan of God. I. The Experi- 
ence of the Father. II. The Experience of the 
Dying Son. III. The Death of Christ. 

Chapter Sixteen. The Resurrection and the Atone- 
ment 263 

Their Relation to Each Other. I. The Fact of the 
Physical. II. The Service of the Resurrection. 
III. The Transcendent and the Immanent. 



xiv Contents 

Pages 
Chapter Seventeen. The Law of the Atonement 

in Human Experience 281 

The Experiential Essential to the Ethical. I. The 
Meaning of Law. II. The Subjective-objective 
Nature of Experience. 

Chapter Eighteen. Atonement for the Wrong to 

God 295 

The Spheres of the Atonement in its Mediation. 
I. Faith. II. Realization of the Wrong. III. The 
Cleansing from Sin. IV. The Satisfaction to God. 

Chapter Nineteen. Atonement for the Wrong to 

Fellow-man 309 

The General Effect of the Wrong of Sin. I. The 
New Relation in Christ. II. Faith in Atonement. 
III. A Full Atonement. IV. Righting the Social 
Wrongs. 

Chapter Twenty. Atonement in Moral Character 

and Spiritual Life 323 

Righteousness in Moral Character and its Rela- 
tions. I. The Salvation of Character. II. The 
Harmonizing Within. III. Perfect Personality, its 
Life and Freedom. 

Chapter Twenty-one. Summary and Conclusion.. 335 
Positive Theology Grounded in Religious Experi- 
ence. The Atonement a Doctrine of Christian 
Life. The Deity of Christ. Progress in State- 
ment of the Atonement. The Personal Theory. 
Conclusion. 



THEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION 



Our Father! while our hearts unlearn 
The creeds that wrong thy name, 

Still let our hallowed altars burn 
With faith's undying flame. 

If mid the gathering storms of doubt 

Our hearts grow faint and cold, 
The strength we cannot live without 
Thy love will not withhold. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

The most distinctive and determinative element in modern 
theology is what we may term a new feeling for Christ. 
By this feeling its specific character is at once defined and 
expressed. . . Now, how has this new feeling for Christ 
affected constructive Christian theology? We have just 
seen that historical inquiry raises questions that belong 
to the philosophy of history, which is but the most con- 
crete form of the philosophy alike of nature and man. 
We cannot conceive and describe the supreme historical 
Person without coming face to face with the profoundest 
of all the problems in theology; but then we may come 
to them from an entirely changed point of view, through 
the Person that is to be interpreted, rather than through 
the interpretations of his person. When this change is 
effected, theology ceases to be scholastic, and becomes 
historical ; and this precisely represents the change which 
it has undergone or is undergoing. The speculative coun- 
terpart of the new feeling for Christ is the rejuvenescence 
of theology. 

— Principal A. M. Fairbairn, D. D. 



CHAPTER ONE 

THEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION 

In the beginning God made the world, and the be- 
ginning of the world was in him. God, in its origin, 
was the sure promise of God in its development. 
The divine immanence is the condition and the 
pledge of progress. God in the world and the world 
in God move ever on to greater good. The world 
is on the upward way. The whole universe 
throbs with a divine movement. God is the Soul of 
its progress, the Companion of its evolution. All 
creation is striving to keep step with its Maker. God 
and his worlds march on together. The face of 
each realm is forward; its stride is onward. God 
leads on. 

I. Forefront in the advance of the universe is 
man. He in himself is a galaxy of worlds. Along 
various lines he has been steadily progressing. His 
mind is on the march of conquest in the realm of 
truth. Within this vast domain there is ample room 
for endless progress. The world of truth is one of 
perfect order and endless variety. Distinction may 
be made between truth of expression and truth of 
that expressed, between truth of mind and of 

3 



4 The Living Atonement 

morals, of heart and of life, of being and of be- 
coming. The lowest order of truth is that of form, 
and the highest that of substance. The truth highest 
in form and in substance is to be found in per- 
sonality. The mistake is often made of attempting 
to limit truth to the intellectual order. This, no 
doubt, occurs because of all other realms of truth 
having their counterpart in the intellectual. 

Theology is a field of study. It is the study of truth 
in relation to God. It is the highest of all sciences. 
Theology is a science because enough of its truths 
and their relations are known to make an orderly 
presentation. It is a growing science because knowl- 
edge of its truths is on the increase. Theology, in 
its very nature, is an inexhaustible subject. It is 
not an independent study. All other sciences make 
contribution to it. Theology shares, therefore, in 
the general progress of human thought. 

Scientific theology is not the only kind. There 
is a higher order. " The heart makes the theo- 
logian," we are told. There is a theology of the 
heart as well as of the head. The latter is an im- 
perfect expression of the former. Scientific theology 
is compelled to make its statements in terms of the 
intellect. The highest order of theology, being the 
truth of life, cannot be reduced to mental terms 
without tremendous loss. The best theology is not 
found written upon the leaves of books; it is in- 
scribed upon the pages of human life. The highest 
kind of theology is Living Theology. 



Theological Evolution 5 

II. A study of its history and phases reveals the 
fact that theology is subject to a law of evolution. 
The word evolution is here used in its best sense, 
as descriptive of the process of development. This 
term is not fitted to designate at the same time 
progress and primal origin. The theory of evo- 
lution has been much abused. This " Bucephalus " 
has been used as a cart-horse to the dump-heaps. 
Some day he will be restored to his place as 
snorting steed of battle; and upon him will mount 
some theological Alexander who will straightway 
conquer the world. 

Theological evolution follows a natural order. 
Its advance may be marked in point of attention. 
Progress thus made is not peculiar to theology. It 
is found in all lines of study. Preaching may be 
taken as an example of it and of the naturalness of 
its order. 

In the first stage, attention is centered upon the 
material of the sermon. The preacher may not 
know beforehand exactly what he will say. He 
thinks out his subject while speaking. Again, he 
may be endeavoring to recall what he did prepare ; 
or having his notes or manuscript before him, his 
attention is fixed thereon. He is sermon-conscious. 

The second stage is reached when attention is 
fixed upon delivery. Equally important with hav- 
ing something to say, is knowing how to say it. 
The preacher, having mastered the material of his 
sermon, concentrates his attention upon the art of 



6 The Living Atonement 

expression. He is then concerned with tone and 
inflection of voice, gesture, and posture. He is 
delivery-conscious. 

In the third stage, attention is focused upon the 
audience. The preacher gives direct attention to his 
hearers. He is hearer-conscious. He now reaches 
the maximum of his power as a speaker. In the two 
former stages he had unconsciously held the atten- 
tion of the congregation to the point of his own. 
They watched the doing of the thing, rather than 
listened for themselves. The speaker's attention, 
when centered upon the audience, directs their at- 
tention to themselves, and produces an atmosphere 
which is psychologically electric. Truth is then com- 
municated by lightning flashes. Of course, the ma- 
terial of the sermon always limits the range of pos- 
sible evolution. Should the preaching consist in the 
flash of empty fulmination, heat-lightning, and stage 
thunder, advance in power is impossible. Truth in 
substance must precede progress in the presenting 
of its form. 

The art of the theologian is also largely the art 
of attention. The perfection of the art comes by 
perfecting the artist. There is no evolution of 
theology apart from evolution of the theologian. 
Here, also, higher objects of attention replace the 
lower. Attention is first fixed on system, then on 
truth, finally on Jesus Christ. Three types of 
theology result: the systematic, the critical, and 
the positive. 



Theological Evolution 7 

III. The young theologian in the first stage of his 
evolution adopts the ready-made system of a spir- 
itual father or a beloved teacher. Youth naturally 
accepts without question the social, the political, and 
the ecclesiastical systems which it finds in vogue. 
It is natural for youth to accept also the theological 
system which charges the very atmosphere of home, 
school, and church. Once in possession of the indi- 
vidual, the system rules, schools, and molds him. 
Calvinism, Arminianism, or some other ism, is then 
lord of all it surveys on the little island of per- 
sonality. 

In this stage the system is everything. It alone is 
theology ; it alone is essential. The individual stands 
ready to defend it at any cost. He argues for it, bat- 
tles for it, and lives for it. All truths are judged by 
their adaptability to it. Scripture itself receives no 
other interpretation than that which is in harmony 
with the system. The order of procedure is from the 
system to facts, and not the reverse. " The survival 
of the fittest," is determined by system-fitness. 

Growth in this period is marked by the refining 
and modifying of the master-system, or the ex- 
changing of it for some other system. The training 
in this stage is a good one. The system instinct is 
divine; but it has its limitations. Feeding upon 
system alone, the theologian becomes spiritually 
dwarfed. Some day dissatisfaction with the re- 
sulting sickening stagnation arises. This revulsion 
is the promise of an evolution. Perhaps some start- 



8 The Living Atonement 

ling fact throws its searchlight glare upon the de- 
fects and deformities of the beloved system. The 
discovery is made that systems are but the tentative 
arrangement of human thought, rather than the 
truth itself. Because of this revulsion the hasty con- 
clusion is now reached that all systems of man's 
thought are but elaborate methods of sandbank 
building upon the shores of time where soon the 
wind and waves in ruthless sport toss into oblivion 
the toil of a lifetime. 

Passing out of the system chamber, which has 
been for some time the home of his mind, the young 
theologian discovers that its little window, which 
has been light itself to him, is not light, but only 
one of its dim inlets. Blinking in the brightness of 
broad daylight, he sees before him a well-trod path 
leading to an imposing structure with broad win- 
dows and radiant skylights. Entering, he finds the 
building everywhere stored with scientific para- 
phernalia. He is now in the laboratory of truth. 
He has reached the second stage of his theological 
development. 

IV. The critical period is now entered, and at- 
tention is forthwith centered upon truth, but upon 
intellectual truth only. The second stage usually 
answers to the college and seminary period. It is 
not, however, confined to this time. The tremendous 
advance of education in our day has brought about 
an unnatural lengthening of the ordinary time spent 



Theological Evolution 9 

in this stage. It has also induced some theologians 
to settle down in it for the rest of their lives; but 
this, of course, is an abnormal condition. When 
there will have come an advance in religious life 
equal to that in education, the theology of the sec- 
ond stage will no longer predominate. There may 
be cycles in which each of the three types of the- 
ology in turn predominate. The nature of the fore- 
most movement of general progress accounts for 
this; and determines also which of the three types 
of theology may be in the ascendency at any given 
time. 

Much good results from the second period, not- 
withstanding many passing through it become sadly 
upset by the breaking up of the venerated systems 
and the plowing up of time-worn paths of thought. 
Many have their dignity ruffled by being dragged 
bodily out of old-time ruts. The sophomore critics 
never fail to haze the poor freshmen who are slow in 
readjustment. As college and seminary days are 
appreciated in a larger and saner way long after they 
are over, so with the days of critical thought and 
unrest. Their incidental unpleasantnesses are finally 
forgotten, and their services remembered. 

The second stage is not marked by constructive- 
ness. The first period could not be so accused ; but 
in it the theologian was not overcareful in the se- 
lection of his building material. In the first stage 
it is the relating, and in the second the verifying 
of truth, which is of primary interest. One tends 



io The Living Atonement 

to be oversystematic, and the other overcritical. 
Americans say of themselves, " We first overdo, 
then do." Mortals everywhere are prone to ex- 
tremes. We had our bicycle craze. Those who can 
afford it, have now the motor-car craze. The critical 
craze all may afford. Even crazes, however, have 
an educative power not to be despised. 

The subject-matter of religion includes far more 
than the intellectual, and criticism of its material 
cannot proceed upon an exclusively intellectual basis 
without leading to endless vagaries. The growing 
critic becomes some day thoroughly dissatisfied with 
the narrow line which intellectual criticism affords. 
There is an evolution of criticism itself, which nat- 
urally advances from the intellectual into the broader 
criticism of heart and experience. It was to the 
latter kind that Jesus ever invited men. The third 
stage of theological evolution is not far off when the 
scope and method of criticism are thus enlarged. 

V. In the third period of the evolution of theology, 
the critical is replaced by the positive. In the first 
stage, the question asked was : " Does this help the 
system?" In the second, the challenge was: "Is 
this true ? " In the third, the inquiry is : " Does this 
help the spiritual life ? " In the first period, there was 
sought the positive to a chosen system of thought; 
in the second, the positive to intellectual truth; and 
in the third, the positive to religious life. Being the 
science of a life, instead of the intellectual fraction 



Theological Evolution n 

thereof, it is the theology of the whole soul. In it 
all the powers of personality share in the same ex- 
perience and combine in the same testimony, the 
established certainty of that experience and life. 

When the third stage in the evolution of the 
sermon was reached, its material was not discounted 
in value, nor the worth of good delivery discredited. 
The place to which their worth entitled them, 
was accorded. So, when the third stage of theology 
is reached, all system and criticism are not aban- 
doned. It would be a revolution, not an evolution, 
if it were otherwise. Positive theology is not 
unsystematic and uncritical. Disorder and untruth 
would be decided hindrances to it. Faith in and love 
for Jesus Christ need orderliness and truthfulness. 
The higher the character of him to whom they are 
given, the more faith and devotion are embarrassed 
by mental slovenliness and lack of love for the 
truth. Faith of the heart does not induce paralysis 
in the brain. Positive theology is not pusillanimous. 

There were faith and love in the system and 
critical stages ; but there they were related primarily 
to abstract truth. In the larger sphere of the third 
stage of theology, faith, love, and devotion are 
centered upon the highest of all objects. As God is 
infinitely greater than system and abstraction, faith 
in and love for him are infinitely greater than faith 
in and love for them. After all, full-orbed faith 
and love are to be found only in the relation be- 
tween persons. That is positive theology which 



12 The Living Atonement 

expresses the personal faith and love which lays hold 
on Jesus Christ. Not that the theologian loves sys- 
tem and intellectual truth the less, but Christ the 
more. Toward this divine event in the evolution of 
theology, its earlier stages ever move. 

The center of attention in the third and last stage 
of theology is God in Christ. For the Christian, there 
is no necessary distinction between faith in the Son 
and in the Father. They are one ; and faith in them 
is one. The very genius of the life of the Son is 
faith in, and love for, the Father. Christ is never 
the enemy of any good or of any truth. What is 
negative to the deity of Christ is never really posi- 
tive to faith in, and love for, God. What is positive 
in devotedness to Christ is never negative in loyalty 
to God and truth. What is negative to Christ is 
never positive to good; what is positive in good is, 
in the end, positive in loyalty to Christ. In loyalty to 
him inheres all loyalty to truth. In him is to 
be found the adjustment of all our allegiances and 
interests. These, in their very nature, grow out 
of our faith. High and holy as is interest in the 
welfare of man, in Jesus Christ are found its deepest 
motive, its highest plane, its greatest power and 
effectiveness. 

Interest in intellectual truth cannot be accorded 
the highest place, for the worth of such truth de- 
pends upon the value of the personal relationship 
which it serves. There is no spiritual life apart 
from the interests begotten by personal relation- 



Theological Evolution 13 

ship to Christ. The interest which he begets in 
the soul is of the highest order and widest range. 
Quality of life is measured by the quality of its in- 
terests. There is to be found in the interests which 
Christ begets the highest means for enlarging the 
soul and the greatest room for expanding its life. 
Unfolding spiritual life is the central value and 
verity of Christian experience. The truth of this 
unfolding spiritual life constitutes the material of 
positive theology. 

Christ is the heart of all system, the key-truth of 
all truth, and the center of all spiritual relation- 
ships. Fount of all spiritual life, and source of 
all live, religious thought, he is naturally the soul 
of positive theology. Without him theology must 
be but a cemetery of still-born thoughts. Relig- 
ious thought must find its life in Him who is the 
living truth. It is as the Lord himself said : " I 
am the way," the true system ; " the truth," the 
central reality ; " the life," the life for all, the life 
of life, the substance of religious vitality. 

Systems depend for their value upon that which is 
organized by them. Mere system is nothing. Social 
systems are above the intellectual, and the ethical and 
spiritual above the social. System reaches its highest 
value in divine relations. Intellectual truth depends 
for its value upon personal truth. Truth has higher 
value and added meaning in each of its ascending 
realms. In the intellectual, it is the reality of 
thought ; in the ethical, it is the reality of moral life ; 



14 The Living Atonement 

and in the personal, it is the reality of spiritual being 
in which are organized the lower forms of truth. 
Jesus Christ is the reality and, therefore, the true 
and full revelation of divine personality. He is truth 
in deepest mystery, largest disclosure, and richest 
significance. 

The highest order of theology is that which rises 
from the profoundest depths of soul, and expresses 
the vastest breadths of truth. The inspiration and 
substance of such is found in the Christ of God, and 
in him alone. All is not yet known about him ; and 
new theological thought is therefore bound to ap- 
pear. Religion is forever either dying or develop- 
ing. There is the possibility of theological evolu- 
tion, because there is the possibility of theological 
reversion or atavism. A great teacher has said that 
the world has seen as much devolution as evolution. 
Side by side in all realms they are to be found. Re- 
version to lower type occurs in theology as else- 
where. There is a world of difference between 
" New Theology " in evolution and " New The- 
ology " in reversion. Theology is included in the 
sum of things " new in Christ Jesus." Much of 
what passes to-day under the name of progress is 
but glorified decay. Much of what now seems to be 
retrograde movement is but progress in disguise. 
How shall we distinguish between them? It was 
George Macdonald who said : 

All growth that is not toward God 
Is growing to decay. 



II 

CRITICAL THEOLOGY AND IDEALISM 



Criticism seems to be accidental and sporadic rather than 
systematic and premeditated (in those earlier days when 
all the sciences lacked systematic exposition). Never- 
theless, critical arguments — we may almost say the critical 
arguments one and all, as later developed by the constant 
practice of criticism — are used throughout this stage. It 
is therefore an error to speak of the ancient times as 
though criticism was unknown in them, or of the history 
of criticism as dating from the latter half of the eighteenth 
century. 

— Prof. Andrew C. Zenos. 



CHAPTER TWO 

CRITICAL THEOLOGY AND IDEALISM 

There is the law that the richness of theology 
depends upon its source and spirit. This has illus- 
tration on every hand. In furnishing an example 
of this law elsewhere, forgive a second reference to 
preaching, for nothing lies so close to theology as 
the sermon. 

I. There are three types of preachers, the intel- 
lectual, the emotional, and the spiritual. The first 
finds his source-world in thought. He is didactic 
rather than prophetic, mentally inspiring rather than 
spiritually edifying. The second depends upon the 
emotional source-world. He draws the crowd, for, 
in general, sensation is more prized than instruction. 
We need not be surprised that such is the case. 
This preference comes from the brain-weariness and 
heart-hunger of the masses. Emotional preaching, 
however, intoxicates rather than strengthens; and 
the congregation holds together only so long as the 
intoxication lasts. The third type, while using the 
intellectual and emotional, draws mainly from the 
deeper spiritual sources. This preacher holds that 
he himself needs more preparation than the sermon. 
b 17 



1 8 The Living Atonement 

His personality, when fully prepared, becomes a 
vortex whence the swirl of divine forces makes out- 
rush. To stir the emotions needs but a pathetic 
story well told. To save the soul as well as thrill it, 
and to inspire it to religious activity, is a more 
serious matter. The more the preacher's person- 
ality is attuned to the divine Spirit, the greater the 
realms from which he draws, and the more his 
preaching accomplishes in harmonizing this world 
to God. 

An increasing number are saying at the present 
time, " We love religion ; but we hate preaching." 
This may be the fault of the hearer, or of the 
preacher. Failing to create interest in what he is 
saying, the preacher lacks in power of helpfulness. 
It is useless to say that the sermon may be rich, 
though not interesting. To whom, in that case, is it 
rich? The sermon setting forth the barrenness and 
failure of the life which invariably accompanies the 
itching ear, could not fail to interest the possessor 
of it. Then the itching would turn to tingling. 
" The Sword of the Lord " is exceedingly inter- 
esting to people when its straight thrust finds them. 
God's thought is of compelling interest ; and that is 
most God's thought which best expresses the pre- 
eminent spiritual need. The sermon wearies more 
often because it is not the word of God, than 
because it is. 

The theologian of to-day is much in the same 
plight as the preacher of the present time. Men are 



Critical Theology and Idealism 19 

saying, " We love God ; but we hate theology." 
This noble science has become a byword and a 
hissing, a synonym for the dull, dry, and uninterest- 
ing. Alas ! What was once so rich in honor is 
now so poor that none will do it reverence. We 
cannot go back to the old theology ; because it is as 
out of date as the science of the last century. A 
" New Theology " has appeared ; but so far it has 
done little more than build up a Babel tower of 
negations. The confusion of tongues has come, and 
the scattering has resulted. 

The limited source and the critical spirit of mod- 
ern theology are responsible in a large measure for 
its unpopularity. Being mainly negative in nature, 
a critical theology is unable to meet the great con- 
structive needs of religious life. Theology is full of 
interest, strong in saving and edifying truth, and 
characterized by the spirit of helpfulness in pro- 
portion as it is Christ-inspired and Christ-filled. It 
is not Christ, but intellectual truth which critical 
theology seeks ; and it cannot be richer than the 
fount whence it springs. The stream cannot rise 
higher than its source. Preaching and theology 
have precisely the same work to do in expressing 
the fulness of the mind, heart, and will of God. 
Their sources must correspond with this work to be 
done, or it will remain undone. An intellectual 
source for either must prove disappointing; yea> 
even disastrous. From what a fulness of life did 
apostolic preaching and theology arise ! How well 



20 The Living Atonement 

Paul mastered the art of combining religion and 
theology! For him they had a common living 
source. Both were rich, because drawn from the 
richest of source-worlds, " the unsearchable riches 
of Christ." 

II. The theology of the philosopher may look well 
in a book, the naturalistic theology of the scientist 
may seem to be in close touch with the thought of 
to-day, and the writings of the critical theologian 
may be valued for their high estimate of intellectual 
truth; but all these types have serious limitations 
and attendant dangers. If theology, the science 
of religion, is to prove as helpful as other sciences 
are in their respective realms, it must meet the 
spiritual rather than the intellectual problems of the 
time. 

The present spiritual situation calls, as it has ever 
done, for intellectual honesty; but it requires vastly 
more. It demands also the moral and spiritual 
honesty that saves from sin, and extends the king- 
dom of God in a world which is bankrupt toward 
God. Every life, however poor, is a sermon — a 
theology. The poorer the sermon which a man 
lives, the better the sermon which he demands from 
the pulpit, and justly so, for the more serious the 
case, the more skilful should be the services of the 
physician; yet only the lives which preach the best 
can best appreciate the preaching of the best. The 
Athenian ear would ever hear the preaching of the 



Critical Theology and Idealism 21 

new. When the hearer's interest is true, his desire 
is that he himself should be new; and to him the 
preaching of the living Christ is ever new. 

Never has a period demanded so much from the 
pulpit, the church, and the Bible; and never has a 
period — thanks to the critical spirit — been less 
capable of receiving their triune ministry. This is 
the noonday of educational progress ; but the danger 
of the school is ever that of failing to carry men 
through the critical period of their development. 
The perennial peril of the university is that of pro- 
ducing a brood of professional critics who are 
stunted by failure to realize the full meaning of 
truth, because of their worship of intellectual truth. 
The critical-period fever is like certain diseases of 
childhood, from which the patient must completely 
recover or settle in a state of chronic debility. The 
writings of one who has settled down in the critical 
stage for the rest of his life should not be taken 
too seriously, be he mere student or most learned 
professor. His is a case of arrested development. 
Feeling that something is wrong, and not realizing 
that the wrong lies within himself, he imagines that 
everything which he touches needs pulling down. 
Dwarfed because of remaining permanently in a 
state that should be transitional, his judgment and 
all his other mental processes cannot be quite trust- 
worthy. The conqueror of old made a solitude, 
and called it peace. The destructive critic of to-day 
makes a desolation, and calls it truth. 



22 The Living Atonement 

The furnace of criticism is in the present time 
heated seven times hotter than heretofore. In this 
white heat some slag is certain to separate from the 
useful ore. The crime of to-day is the putting forth 
of this slag as the ripest theology of modern scholar- 
ship. The peril Of the critic and of critical theology 
is not a peculiar one. Every one tends to think of 
his own as central to all other work. It is but 
natural that the teacher should reduce Christ's re- 
demption to salvation by teaching. It is but natural 
that the critic should interpret the Christian life by 
critical processes. Tennyson speaks of " the nar- 
rowing lust of gold." There is also the narrowing 
lust of criticism, " the defect of its virtue." 

Another danger of critical theology is that of 
starving both writer and reader. It is a weakening 
diet that quickly results in spiritual anemia. The 
work of criticism is not adapted to produce or to 
develop spiritual receptivity. Even after the most 
reverent and painstaking criticism, the soul finds 
itself in a mood that hinders the receiving of nour- 
ishment. This mood must be banished before the 
spiritual man can enjoy the good things set before 
him on the banquet table of the Lord's bounties. 
It is true there is the critical stage in spiritual de- 
velopment; but the critical faculty may be over-de- 
veloped, and thereby arrest the growth of the 
spiritual nature as a whole. 

What the analytical chemistry of bread is to a 
hungry man, critical theology is to the soul. If 



Critical Theology and Idealism 23 

religion were an intellectual matter only, criticism 
might nourish and satisfy us. Criticising the menu 
is a poor substitute for eating. There is no spiritual 
nutriment in the critic's decision that a passage of 
Scripture was not written by J, nor by E, but by 
D, even when he is so sure that he writes q. e. d. 
Every religious truth has its corresponding activity 
of the soul. Such truth is fully assimilated only by 
means of this activity which is its natural counter- 
part; and the truth is then lived. Some truths 
cannot be lived; that is to say, they are intellectual, 
not religious truths. Some truths are bread to the 
soul ; others are stone. It is usually truths of the 
latter class which occupy the attention of the critic. 
After the incendiary fires of destructive criticism 
have finished their work, what is there for the 
critic to eat ? What his labor of love has produced : 
" He feedeth upon ashes." 

Let us not imagine because of the dangers of 
over-developed criticism and of critical theology, 
that the critical faculty is of no use whatever. There 
is the necessary work of excavating, which must be 
done by criticism. Then positive faith lays a foun- 
dation, and builds anew from the depths into which 
criticism has descended. Critical theology being 
what is thrown out in this process of excavating, let 
who will camp upon this dump-heap. The moment a 
man begins to build, the critical faculty is not to the 
fore. Then it is assumed that criticism has done its 
work. The individual now becomes constructive 



24 The Living Atonement 

rather than critical. He can no longer be critical as 
to his foundation; he should be critical as to the 
material for his superstructure. But while he is 
criticising this material, he is not building. Con- 
structive criticism is a contradiction in terms, except 
when it refers to perfecting the art or methods of 
criticism. It may be constructive in regard to its 
own work; as to all other work, it but judges and 
passes sentence as to the fitness for structural pur- 
poses. He is a poor builder who is a poor critic; 
but he is no builder who is only a critic. He is not 
a safe critic who is but a critic. The critic who is 
to be trusted is the critic which has proved his 
faith in himself and his principles by building a 
structure for the soul, a true habitation for God, or 
a workshop for his kingdom. This is but applying 
to himself the principles which he applies elsewhere. 
Speculative criticism has produced pure clamor 
rather than pure truth; but is not the only kind. 
There is criticism and criticism. Retrograde criti- 
cism has been checked by its opposite kind. Fire has 
been fought with fire. Destructive criticism has been 
more than matched by defensive criticism. Higher 
criticism, misunderstood and consequently hated by 
many, has been shown to be of the devil, only when 
pressed into service for his ends. Biblical criticism 
has done a very valuable work ; but it has yet to do 
its best work. The marvel is that it has accom- 
plished so much when so sorely handicapped. Its 
work has been hindered by extremists, exploited by 



Critical Theology and Idealism 25 

theorists, and brought into disrepute by those who 
manifestly belonged elsewhere. 

As an outcome of the critical investigations of the 
present time, the Bible has, in some respects, become 
a new book. This has not proved immediately help- 
ful. That it will finally, ought not to be doubted. 
The more the historical method is used in interpret- 
ing the Scriptures, and the more known about them 
from any source, the more use must they prove to 
the cause of Christianity. True faith and true 
criticism are not necessarily opposed. Hand in hand 
they have walked along the broad highway of 
progress in the knowledge of God and of his word. 
Nevertheless, what experience has already verified, 
we must not uselessly continue to criticise. Criticism 
passes away, but faith abides. They part company 
only when criticism has finished its necessary work. 
True criticism has its place as a forerunner of a 
larger faith, making ready the way, the paths 
straight, and the rough places smooth, as John the 
Baptist did for Christ. Criticism having completed 
this noble though severe service, may say of faith : 
" It must increase; but I must decrease." 

III. In the previous chapter it was said that 
the critical period in theological development is 
now abnormally lengthened because of education 
being to-day forefront in the general movement of 
progress. Another reason may be assigned for 
this undue lengthening. Critics have been criti- 



26 The Living Atonement 

cising the very means of progress, the tools neces- 
sary to their own work, namely, the standards of 
authority. This means that criticism is traveling 
in a circle. A philosophy has prevailed for some 
time which has led to a restatement of the subject 
of authority on a subjective basis. In keeping with 
this view the critic has imagined himself to be the 
standard of authority. He has, therefore, thrown 
away the pick and drill and begun to dig with his 
fingers in the mine of truth. In accepting this 
philosophy as the interpreter of the standards of 
authority, criticism has lost headway, and will soon 
find itself at a standstill. When there are as many 
standards as there are critics, a general advance is 
impossible. What is true to the individual critic 
only is invalid as criticism. 

The idealistic philosophy above referred to has, 
by a merger, sought to monopolize the stock of all 
philosophy, science, and religion. Ever since the 
time of Kant, it has set men busy reducing all ex- 
perience to the subjective basis. It tells us that all 
knowledge is from within. Even space and time are 
within us. In sensory experience, taking hearing 
as an example, there is no sound outside ourselves. 
It is our auditory nerves which make sound. In 
general, we create the world in which we live. Each 
man makes his own universe. He causes the earth 
to stand fast, the stars to gleam, and the sun to 
shine. He makes day and night. He even makes 
his god; or else has none. The Bible tells us how 



Critical Theology and Idealism 2J 

God made man; idealism tells us how man makes 
God. Is not this but idolatry in a new dress ? Is it 
not the paganism of manufactured deity? The 
heathen could have a god in common, but each 
idealist must have his own god, of his own making. 
Thus he outpagans the pagan. 

This is not the place for an extended examination 
of this interesting philosophy, and of the various 
branches to which it is trunk and root. It combines 
truth with error. It contains the truth that there is 
an inherent subjectivity in all our knowledge and 
experience. That such is all subjective is far from 
true. Scarce a truth has been discovered by man 
that he has not proclaimed as all the truth. This 
happens in the case of the disciple of this philosophy, 
when he sets forth idealism as the whole truth of 
religion, of authority, and of experience in general. 
Remembering that Calvinism needs to be balanced 
by Arminianism for nearer approach to the full 
truth, may it not be that idealism needs to be bal- 
anced by realism to escape being cast into the ditch 
of error? Balance in thought, in moral character, 
and in life is at once the most difficult and the most 
precious of attainments. Let us give full credit 
to idealism for the truth it contains, while at the 
same time correcting some of its sweeping assump- 
tions. 

First, the fallacy of idealism lies in practically 
merging the. subjective and the objective into one. 
All experience proceeds according to its essential 



28 The Living Atonement 

subject-object working principle. If the object is 
contained in the subject, or is merely the projection 
of the subjective, there is then really no objective; 
and where there is no real external objective, there 
is no real experience in relation to anything outside 
of ourselves. When a man thinks of space and time 
as within himself, and as having no objective exist- 
ence, he thinks himself out of existence. Any pro- 
cess of experience which is wholly subjective is ad- 
mittedly wholly illusion. That which is wholly 
objective is wholly non-existent, so far as experience 
is concerned. 

It is true there is a certain amount of pro- 
jection of the subjective into the objective. In all 
that we see, something of ourselves is seen. We 
know something of ourselves in all we know. The 
more complex and exalted the object, the greater 
the room for a subjective projection; and to reduce 
this projection to what is absolutely necessary, is 
one of the great ends of education. It is also true 
that the objective is projected into the subjective. 
Otherwise, knowledge and experience could never 
grow. The greater and more complex the sub- 
jective, the more the room for objective projection. 
Idealism tells us that we do not know things in 
themselves, the noumena. This is both true and 
untrue. If there were no identity, nothing in com- 
mon between the subjective and the objective, this 
would be entirely true. In proportion as there is 
something in common between us and them, or be- 



Critical Theology and Idealism 29 

tween the subjective faculty and its objective, we 
do know things in themselves. For example, we 
occupy space, we are space ; and can therefore know 
objective space. We are a part of what is a suc- 
cession, a succession of varied orders; and can 
therefore know time. As long as we are body as 
well as soul, we shall know space. As long as there 
will be order and succession in this or the next 
world there will be time. This necessary mediation 
of something in common between the subjective and 
the objective in all phases of experience and knowl- 
edge, is one of the deepest and most revealing sub- 
jects of thought. Let no one object to the thought 
of a mediator in the xealm of religion, for mediation 
is the necessity of all knowledge and of all experi- 
ence. Our knowledge is not complete when this 
identity or mediation is impaired ; but the knowledge 
that we have is true and real as far as it goes. 
What we see, we see. What we hear, we hear. 
What we know, we know. If this were not so, we 
could not even say with Hamlet : " I know a hawk 
from a handsaw." 



Ill 

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AND CRITICISM 



Resurrection and the vision of the divinity of Jesus both 
originated and organized the Christian life. Critical prob- 
abilities and historic credibilities, valuations of documents, 
first century witness or second century testimony, are no- 
where in the structure of Christian life. Life has an 
inspiration of its own, whatever it is, or however it 
originates, by which it lives. If there is no reality in- 
spiring it, but only an illusion, it will blaze up and then 
die out The Christian life had long ago died out if the 
divinity of Jesus had not been a genuine human perception 
and the resurrection a force of fact. 

—Rev. W. W. Peyton. 



CHAPTER THREE 

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AND CRITICISM 

There is no subject more vital to the thinking of 
to-day than that of religious authority. Much has 
been said and written that has tended to the con- 
fusion rather than to the conclusion of the whole 
matter. Many a pulpit is afloat in the waters of 
doubt, or is being swept out to sea by the retreating 
tidal wave of idealism. 

Two great opposing schools of thought, the ideal- 
ists and the realists, have given us their interpreta- 
tions of the matter at issue. The former holds to 
the authority of the religious consciousness, or sub- 
jective authority. The latter defends what is called 
objective or external authority. 

I. When it is on the one hand asserted, and on 
the other denied, that the religious consciousness is 
the seat of authority, it is clear that the science of 
consciousness, psychology, must arbitrate. Accord- 
ing to this mediator, both are right and both are 
wrong. Subjective and objective authorities are 
pronounced to be halves of a truth, which, when 
divided, become inevitably contradictory, antagonis- 
tic factions. The psychological solution of this 
c 33 



34 The Living Atonement 

problem is that both subjective and objective au- 
thorities are abstractions for discussion, neither of 
which is authority in reality. In describing au- 
thority, it may be necessary to discuss these phases 
separately; but in experience they are never so 
found. 

The inseparable nature of the subjective and 
objective in consciousness and in all phases of ex- 
perience, has been well set forth by many psychol- 
ogists. When objective or external authority is not 
linked with its subjective, it does not become a 
reality of experience. Religion without experience 
is as impossible as matter without space. Authority 
is, therefore, not religious, except as it becomes 
experience. Wholly objective or external authority 
would be independent of subjective recognition and 
respect ; and would, therefore, not be religious to the 
soul. What there is in the objective is never real- 
ised except by means of its union with the sub- 
jective. The only way objective authority can find 
its way into human experience, is according to 
this organic law of experience, its subject-object 
working principle. To become experiential, and re- 
ligious, and real, authority must cease to be merely 
objective. 

Subjective authority is as incomplete or impos- 
sible as objective. Some describe the subjective in 
authority as calling into existence its own objective, 
and think of its objective as thus contained in the 
subjective. This is a vain attempt to make them 



Religious Authority and Criticism 35 

mean one and the same thing. When the faculty 
which recognizes authority is thought of as the 
authority which it recognizes, our explanation of it 
has traveled in a circle. The eye does not see itself, 
it sees the light. It does not call into being the 
waves of ether, it records them. Sight is not light ; 
the world is not in darkness when we shut our eyes. 
The optic nerve passes in the sensation of light, 
when the mind, through the eye, objectifies the light. 
True, the optic nerve when disturbed by a blow, 
may pass in the sensation of light, for this nerve 
can neither receive nor give any other sensation 
than that of light. The person then " sees stars," 
as we say. Are the stars thus seen a reality? No. 
They are a subjectivity like subjective authority. 
Seeing is a subjective-objective process ; and as there 
is no objective in this case, nothing is seen. If the 
study of the science of astronomy were reduced 
to " seeing stars " in the way mentioned, we would 
have a parallel to the reducing of authority to the 
subjective plane. 

Paul said, literally : " I strike my body in the eye, 
and bring it into subjection " ; but subjective au- 
thority strikes the religious consciousness in the eye 
to give it liberty to make darkness seem light. When 
such is the light within the soul, how great is its 
darkness ! If the lens of the eye is turned inward, 
sight is at an end, no matter how often the sensation 
of light is artificially produced. When the Christian 
consciousness turns in upon itself as its own au- 



36 The Living Atonement 

thority, both Christianity and authority are at an 
end. Religion is never any wider than the range 
of its authority; and the Christianity which begins 
and ends within a man, is no Christianity. To re- 
duce religion and authority to a subjectivity is to 
stultify both. 

The religious consciousness or " the truth-sense " 
cannot be in itself a standard of religion and of 
criticism. It is but the subjective of a process 
which is inseparably subjective-objective. Mere 
subjective standards put an end to all religion, 
criticism, and to science in general. The subjective 
of it ceases to bear all semblance to authority, when 
separated from its objective. In fact, it is then 
the denial of authority. 

In proportion as there is a common objective, 
there is a common standard of authority. In the 
subjective there is some room for divergence; but 
withal there is a unity. Truth, like tears, is under- 
stood the world over, though both vary in subjective 
meaning. Man, and even brute, instinctively recog- 
nize authority. Concave implies the existence of 
convex. Subjective authority implies the existence 
of its counterpart, the objective ; otherwise it has no 
meaning. As Joseph Cook has said, " God makes 
no half hinges." 

Summing up this phase of the subject, we may 
say that the seat of religious authority is neither 
wholly within the soul, nor wholly outside it. In- 
side is found the faculty which recognizes, and, so 



Religious Authority and Criticism $7 

ids, constitutes authority ; and without the things so 
recognized. Eyes without light would be no better 
than light without eyes. Seeing does not take place 
within the body, nor outside. It is the within and 
the without meeting. So the seat of sight, like the 
seat of religious authority, is found in a union of 
the internal and the external. What this union 
brings forth depends upon the natures of the sub- 
jective and objective. Experience is thus differen- 
tiated by means of the union of varying subjectives 
and objectives. The former may be any faculty or 
sense, or the soul as a whole, and the latter all else 
in existence to which we may be thus related. Love 
and hate, faith and unbelief, find their objective 
counterparts, and thus constitute a special experience 
in keeping with their natures, Authority is one 
kind of experience, and is of varied orders. The 
subjectives and objectives vary with the different 
kinds of authority. In the authority of Christian 
experience there are the inseparable two, the indi- 
vidual will recognizing and respecting a will higher 
than its own, and this will which is so recognized 
and respected. Putting in place of the two a wholly 
internal authority is like substituting a pot-hole 
for a river. Subjective authority could no more 
fill the place of all authority than a treadmill could 
do the work of a locomotive. 

The expression, " the seat of authority," must be 
amended or become meaningless in the atmosphere 
which has been created by idealism. We have recog- 



38 The Living Atonement 

nized that this seat can be located neither in the 
objective nor in the subjective alone. Now, the 
phrase, " the seat of authority," is a poor one to 
express the union of the subjective and objective, 
the internal and the external. The figure of a 
" seat " does not fitly illustrate an organic union 
or a process of religious experience. Some such 
terms as " the working basis," " the experiential 
constitution," or " the organizing principle," might 
be used to set forth the living, experiential nature of 
religious authority. 

II. The word " authority " is essentially a rela- 
tional term. It expresses the fundamental quality of 
a certain relation. The social realm, in which 
authority is the relation expressed, must be under- 
stood in order that we may understand the nature 
of this fundamental quality. What State authority 
is, depends upon what a State is. What the au- 
thority of criticism is, depends upon what intellec- 
tual truth is. What religious authority is, depends 
upon what religion is. 

Each realm possesses its own appropriate au- 
thority within it. When we pass outside of the 
family relation, the authority of the home is at an 
end, and city or State authority holds sway. The 
greater includes the less; State authority includes 
family authority; but the authority of the home is 
not valid in State matters. So, in experience, there 
are various realms, each with its own authority. 



Religious Authority and Criticism 39 

The smallest is the autonomous. As consciousness 
may take the form of self-consciousness, so religion 
may take the form of one's relation to himself. In 
this sphere we may have autonomous authority, 
which is not a subjectivity. The objective is, in this 
case, a reality. It is the religious self, and not the 
mere faculty which recognizes this self. All con- 
sciousness is not self-consciousness. All faith is not 
in self. All love is not self-love. All religion is not 
confined within the smaller sphere of a man's relation 
to himself. There is a narrow view of Christianity 
which confines our whole relation to him, to God 
within the soul ; whereas God within is there to en- 
able the soul to be related in a living way to God 
without. Religion is the government of God as 
well as self-management. Autonomous authority 
could no more co\jer the whole realm of religion 
than the authority of the home the entire realm of 
the State. When a man passes outside of his re- 
lation to himself alone, his autonomous authority is 
at once invalid, and therefore at an end. If au- 
tonomy were the only realm in Christianity, au- 
tonomous authority would have held exclusive sway 
in it. If there were only self-love, there would be 
no true love. If there were only faith in self, there 
would be no true faith. If there were only au- 
tonomous authority, there would be no true au- 
thority. 

Authority is the regulative and directive element 
of a personal relationship within some sphere. To 



4-0 The Living Atonement 

understand the authority of the Christian realm, one 
must understand Christianity itself. It is personal 
relationship with God in Christ. The possibility of 
divine authority is the possibility of divine relation- 
ship. To deny the one is to deny the other; yea, 
even the divine existence. To deny the possibility 
of God's relation of authority is logically to deny 
the possibility of all divine relation and existence. 
God must be God. His right it is to rule. The 
orderliness and progress of the universe mirror 
the place and necessity of the divine authority. Hu- 
manity will eternally need the rule of divinity. The 
quality of God's relation is determined by the meas- 
ure of likeness to himself in that to which he is 
related. His authority over man in the full meaning 
of this term, is made possible by man's likeness to 
himself. Divine authority over inanimate nature 
has much less meaning. Because of their likeness, 
God and man can enter each other's experience in 
this relation. It is often assumed that only the im- 
perfect need the rule of God ; whereas all moral im- 
perfection arises out of disobedience to God. The 
perfect Son of God had incomparable regard for the 
rule of the Father in his own life and elsewhere. 
The more perfect the nature of man, the more the 
rule of God is sought after and enjoyed. 

I worship thee, sweet will of God, 

And all thy ways adore; 
And every day I live, 

I seem to love thee more and more. 



Religious Authority and Criticism 41 

It will be remembered that in the discussion of 
idealism a necessary mediation between the sub- 
jective and the objective in experience was men- 
tioned. In Christian authority there must be some- 
thing in common in the subjective and objective 
which is in keeping with the nature of this realm. 
This is the constituent element of authority. The 
concrete Christianity of experience being right per- 
sonal relationship with God, we inquire for the 
central thing in personality that we may hit upon 
the dominant element in personal relationship and 
the essential element in religious authority. It is the 
will. This substance in common in the subjective 
and objective constitutes or organizes religious au- 
thority. Christian authority is at heart not a matter 
of mind, but of will. Of course the will is accom- 
panied and served by the mind in the outworking 
of authority. As only love can know and respond to 
love, so will alone can recognize will and obey it. 
Where there is no human and divine will in relation 
to each other, there is no religious authority in the 
full sense of the term. If God had no will con- 
cerning man, and man had no will concerning God's 
will, religious authority would be impossible. 

The value of any statement of the nature of re- 
ligious authority may be estimated by the help 
it offers to the religious life. There have been 
statements of this matter put forth within our own 
time that, on the confession of their authors, did 
not give them rest or peace; and what they could 



42 The Living Atonement 

not do for their authors, they could not do for any- 
one else. When God's authority is shut in by sub- 
jectivity or shut out by objectivity, his will, which 
alone can bring peace to the soul, is made imprac- 
ticable. Taking the point of view of full Christian 
experience, we may escape the tangle which results 
from having the fractional authority of the mind 
and its abstractions treated as though it were the 
whole authority of the soul, of the full religious life, 
and of the entire realm of God and Christianity. 
The final test of any theory of religious authority 
will be its coincidence with the facts of normal 
Christian experience, and its ministry thereto. 

III. While will is the constituent element in au- 
thority, there are three operative elements, the 
executive, the power, and the lazv. In the authority 
of Christianity Christ is the executive of the divine 
will, the Holy Spirit, the power, and the word of 
God the law. The character of the outgoing life of 
God in Christ, and the nature of the Saviour's work 
in bringing man into normal relation to the Fa- 
ther, constitute Christ the executive of the divine 
authority. Who Christ is, the nature of his work 
for us, and his relation to us and to the Father, 
establish his place in the authority of God. Accep- 
tance of his lordship is, therefore, essential to 
Christianity. We speak of Jesus as the fullest ex- 
pression of the love of God. He could not be this 
if he were not at the same time the fullest expres- 



Religious Authority and Criticism 43 

sion of the will of God. Love without will is empty 
and invertebrate. He is the supreme exponent of 
divine will: he lived the divine authority. He did 
not assume this authority; he was it. He spake 
" as one having authority " ; but his consciousness, 
thought, feeling, will, every act, entire personality, 
and whole life were innately expressive of divine 
authority in being rather than in permissive posses- 
sion. 

By the nature of his person and place, he was 
fitted to make the divine authority a reality in hu- 
man experience. When he is received, the power of 
all divine reality comes into human life. By recog- 
nition of the authority of the Father in the Son, the 
foundation is laid for its upbuilding in Christian 
life. The wider the range of human powers, and 
the more intense their activity, the fuller may be 
the experience of the Lord's authority. This is the 
outworking of the lordship of Christ over his own. 
As large as are the vast relations of the kingdom of 
God, with Christ as its executive head; as wide as 
are the universal relations of God in Christ — so great 
is the realm of the Lord's rulership. " He is the 
King of Glory, the Lord strong and mighty " ; and 
" he must reign till he hath put his enemies under 
his feet." 

Authority in any realm without the appropriate 
power of that realm to accompany it will prove 
ineffective. Asserted authority without supporting 
power becomes a laughingstock. Calling in the aid 



44 The Living Atonement 

of power within another realm confesses usurpation. 
The unrepented crime of the Roman, Greek, and 
other Churches is that of using civil power to sup- 
port spiritual authority. This publishes the lack of 
spiritual power, and increases rather than cures the 
decay which causes it. Authority must prove its 
divine source by using the power of its own realm, 
according to the law of God in that realm. 

The authority of Christ is within the spiritual 
realm. He refused the help of sword and of worldly 
kingdom. He needed them not. The power behind 
the authority of Jesus Christ is that of the Holy 
Spirit. He ever had in his authority the full sup- 
port of the Spirit of God, as he still has in all 
matters. The Spirit is the person of the Trinity 
adapted by nature and office to bring to bear upon 
human personality the personal power of God. 
Empowering by his indwelling and enforcing in his 
transcendence, he establishes and supports the au- 
thority of Christ by the personal energy of God. 
The Spirit is the power of God, working subjec- 
tively and objectively in the experience of divine 
authority. 

As Jesus is the great executive of the divine au- 
thority, so the word of God is the great legislative 
embodiment of the divine will. When he saves the 
soul, God writes his law on the human heart. This 
is not law complete in itself. Having done this, God 
is surely able to perform its counterpart miracle, 
namely, to write its objective complement in a book. 



Religious Authority and Criticism 45 

" The light of the body is the eye " ; but this is not 
light without external light, and needs the objective 
light of the sun. So does the law in the soul need 
the law in the Book. The written word is parallel 
to, and the servant of, the Living Word, Jesus 
Christ. Both combine human and divine elements. 
It is the deity of Christ which gives value to his 
humanity, rather than his humanity which gives 
value to his deity. It is the Christ who gives value 
to the Bible, rather than the Bible which gives value 
to the Christ. His humanity enables the white light 
of his deity to shine through it as a veil, blessing in- 
stead of blinding. In the Scriptures the human ele- 
ment is the vehicle of the divine in making known 
the thought, and will, and law of the Infinite. 

The Bible is the law of life in God. The worth 
of the Scriptures lies in their service to the lordship 
of Christ, who alone can give this life in God. The 
word of God is the great objectification of the will 
of God. What the Christ commands, the laws of sal- 
vation and of service, the rules of divine love and fel- 
lowship, the regulations of human relations in order 
that men live as the family of God, are all to be found 
in The Great Book. There they take the form which 
makes them translatable into human experience and 
constructive in the Christian life. The Scriptures 
direct, sustain, and satisfy the soul. They are the 
divine substance in food-form. They are the su- 
preme written authority on what agrees with the 
soul, on what pleases God, and on the basis of his 



46 The Living Atonement 

judgments. The love letter of the mother to her 
absent son is an authority to him at least in the 
realm of his relation to her. The Bible is the love 
letter of the divine Father to his children. It is his 
law of love and his love of law. It is the power of 
God because the word of God. Its authority is not 
based finally on the intellectual truth which it con- 
tains, but on its moral and spiritual truth, which 
serves the personal, living truth, as it is in Jesus. 
Through the centuries the life springing from him, 
the Christian life wherever found, has, according to 
the law of affinity, recognized and accepted the au- 
thority of The Book, which also came from God. 
The Book of life is naturally an authority to " the 
life that is life indeed." Finally, it is the authority 
on Christ's authority : " It is the power of God unto 
salvation " ; and the law of God unto edification. 

IV. The criticism of Christian authority may be 
desirable, but the religious nature of this authority 
makes it necessary that our criticism be broad 
enough to admit the wide range of religious facts 
to be examined. As religious authority must be 
spiritual and experiential, the criticism of it must 
also be spiritual and experiential. Only the soul 
can fully enter into the things of the soul. Even the 
authority of the Bible in the Christian life cannot 
be pronounced upon adequately by intellectual 
criticism. From the very nature of its abstract 
standard of authority, namely, intellectual truth, 



Religious Authority and Criticism 47 

this similar order of criticism can, at the most, but 
pronounce upon the intellectual truth of Scripture 
statements. In experience light breaks out of the 
Bible; but light also breaks in upon the word. It 
is in the full light of Christian experience that we 
must judge its light. 

The abstract standard of intellectual criticism 
leads back, of course, to the mind of God as the 
concrete authority with which the Christian mind 
has to do. Defining this realm of criticism, we may 
say: Intellectual truth is the correspondence be- 
tween thought and thing, the intellectual correlate 
to existence, and the norm of reality in thought and 
thought-relations. 

It will be seen at once that the mind of God alone 
is absolute authority in this realm. His mind alone 
can objectify it all. He alone can comprehend all 
the reality, relations, and correspondences of intel- 
lectual truth. Men become secondary authorities 
in proportion as their apprehension of intellectual 
truth becomes fuller. A new meaning is thus given 
to authority, namely, that of relative superiority 
of amount of knowledge possessed. Even in a small 
field of critical investigation, so many truths cluster, 
and so intricate is the network of their relations, the 
most learned are the most modest in claiming this 
authority. 

In the field of biblical criticism, for example, a 
scholar acquaints himself with all available knowl- 
edge, or with a goodly portion of it; and he is 



48 The Living Atonement 

then accounted an authority by those who have put 
the most of their time elsewhere. He is not an 
authority outside of his special realm. Since he is 
not a final authority, he must not be excused from 
relating the facts upon which he bases his conclu- 
sions. Others also have the logical faculty as well 
as he; and they too may draw inferences. We 
have to be particular about this, for the conclusions 
of specialists are often based partly on their facts 
and largely upon their theories. 

Truth may be said to be authority to the re- 
ligious mind; but truth is an abstraction; and ab- 
stractions have no place in experience. We never 
know the abstraction whiteness, we know something 
that is white. The real authority of the Christian 
mind is not truth, but something that is true. Truth 
in the mind recognizes truth beyond, which it objec- 
tifies as its Bible, the revealed concrete truth of God. 
When God is in the mind, it cannot fail to recognize 
God in his own thought, and to link itself thereto. 
His mind indwelling in the human mind unites with 
his own mind and thought outside; and constitutes 
the authority of this realm. That is not God in the 
mind which sets it against the thought of God; 
just as that is not God in the soul which sets it 
against the divine will. The presence or absence of 
God in the mind is made manifest by the character 
of its objective affinity in authority. 

The critical faculty, having come to the full de- 
velopment of its power, is not to be looked upon as 



Religious Authority and Criticism 49 

thereafter of no use and really an enemy. If, how- 
ever, in the pride of its strength it is used as an 
end and not as a means to a higher end, it will be 
an enemy. This is true of any power which we 
possess. The power of judging reality is constantly 
needed in the Christian life. All our days we must 
" try the spirits." We may do this effectually only 
as our standard, " the Spirit of Christ," remains 
unquestioned. If, instead, we turn back to criticize 
our criterion in Christ, the spirits are trying us. 
In spiritual life, when we are not pushing the 
enemy, the enemy is pushing us. There is an order 
of criticism that spells retreat. Lot's wife looked 
back; but it turns back. No one can win a victory 
while his back is toward the enemy. We cannot 
have " the sword of truth " in the crucible and in 
the battle at the same time. Debaters will not do 
in place of sharpshooters when the enemy is upon 
us. There is a region where criticism must cease, 
or advance in religious life and service becomes im- 
possible. Criticizing the tools of progress instead 
of using them, makes progress out of the question. 
Halting the march of the world's conquest in order 
to debate with herself the rights of her Lord's 
leadership and the authority of his word, the church 
of Christ at once becomes a mutinous mob of 
critics, in place of a victorious army. 

The son, brought up at the cost of a widowed 
mother's toil and self-sacrifice, will not find it neces- 
sary to reexamine each day the foundation of 

D 



50 The Living Atonement 

his faith in her. Should the time come that faith 
in others will fail, his mother remains a concrete 
standard of goodness, not at all affected by the ruin 
of faith, the chaos of confidence elsewhere. Know- 
ing what Christ, as Saviour, has done for us, and 
how the bread of his word has satisfied us, it is 
neither necessary nor wise to put each day the 
authority of both into the crucible of critical in- 
vestigation. Advance and growth in any realm are 
rendered utterly impossible by a perpetual returning 
to the beginning. As the writer of the book of He- 
brews says: 

" Wherefore, leaving the doctrine of the first 
principles of Christ (the word of the beginning of 
Christ) let us press on unto perfection; not laying 
again a foundation of . . . faith toward God." 

To continue doing what this forbids, we are 
further told, will be to recrucify Christ, and to fall 
away in such a way as to leave no possibility of 
repentance, and therefore no possibility of progress. 
Even for intellectual criticism there is no true ad- 
vance beyond that which serves in saving this world 
and in building up the kingdom of God. For un- 
belief in the Living Truth, veiled as criticism in 
search of truth, there can be no progress, because 
to it there can be no revelation of saving truth, 
and consequently no basal verification of its allied 
truths. 

But what is truth? 'T was Pilate's question put 
To Truth itself, that deign'd him no reply. 



IV 



POSITIVE THEOLOGY AND THE 
ATONEMENT 



Star unto star speaks light, and world to world 
Repeats the passage of the universe 
To God ; the name of Christ — the one great word 
Well worth all languages in earth or heaven. 

— Philip James Bailey. 

Theology, if it is to be of any real use to the preacher, 
must be modernized. . . In a word, if theology is to be 
modernized, it must be by its own gospel. . . It is the 
gospel of Jesus, the eternal Son of God. It sets Christ's 
person in the center of theology no less than of religion. 
If the nineteenth century had done no more than restore 
the person of Christ to the center of theology, it would 
have done a very great theological work. 

— Rev. P. T. Forsyth, D. D. 



CHAPTER FOUR 

POSITIVE THEOLOGY AND THE ATONEMENT 

A positive theology is the need of the hour ; but 
it is also the need of every hour. The critical spirit 
should constantly be giving place to the constructive. 
We have had enough digging down; the time has 
come for more building up. All purely critical work 
need not be abandoned ; but a far larger amount of 
Christian energy might be profitably withdrawn to 
higher ends. According to the cycle-law of prog- 
ress, a revulsion toward the present over-abundance 
of critical thought, must soon manifest itself. 

We begin to hear much of the pragmatist. It is 
a hopeful sign. He is the realist who looks for 
spiritual results ; he is practical as opposed to specu- 
lative. The pragmatist views idealism in the light 
of its output in work. Jesus taught pragmatic 
theology when he said, " By their fruits ye shall 
know them." The practical must, however, grow 
out of the ideal, if it is to prove of value. Positive 
theology combines the good and worthy elements 
in both idealism and pragmatism. 

I. The term " positive " is in the present day 
associated with the pragmatism of pantheistic ideal- 

53 



54 The Living Atonement 

ism. In the past it was used by Comte, whose 
philosophic method, rather than philosophy, set forth 
an evolution, first out of the theological into the 
metaphysical, then out of the latter into the positive, 
by which he meant scientific or sense-knowledge. 
This was really a devolution; and Comte himself 
returned to the first stage in latterly attempting to 
construct a religion. The term " positive " deserves 
to be rescued from both of these associations. 

Pantheistic pragmatism never has been, and never 
can be, a positive force in religion. It is really an 
attempt to intellectualize religion; and in the case 
of Christianity, it would substitute a philosophy for 
the gospel. It is negative where religion must be 
positive, namely, in appeal to the heart. As to 
Comte's system, it may be said that the positive is 
not confined to the realm of physical sense. As 
a matter of fact, every realm has its positive element, 
and the higher the realm the higher the order of 
positivity within it. The positive of one realm 
cannot be substituted for the positive of another, 
for then the two would coalesce. The positive of 
the mind cannot serve as the positive of the heart. 
The positive of a part of the Christian life will not 
do for the positive of the whole. The positive in 
Christianity is not fractionally so. 

In order to test its claim thereto, when a truth is 
emphasized as positive, notice what other truths are 
thereby rendered negative. Does it call other truths 
into activity and adjustment while obscuring none 



Positive Theology and the Atonement 55 

that deserves to shine? For example, emphasize 
the divine immanence as the positive of all Christian 
truth, and we find that it buries out of sight the 
equally important truths of the divine transcend- 
ence and personality. In the same way give the 
positive place to any of the intellectual truths of 
Christianity, and truths of its heart seem to shrivel. 
Emphasize as preeminent any truth of Christian 
feeling, and truths of mind and of morals are 
thereby eclipsed. What, then, is the truth which, in 
being accepted as positive in Christianity, does not 
render its other valuable and essential truths nega- 
tive? It is the truth which relates, organizes, and 
enlivens them all; it is the truth of personality, of 
a person who grips our entire being and relates 
together in life the truth of every part by means 
of the truth that he himself is in God. 

Positive theology is experiential. What, we may 
here inquire, is foundationally positive to Chris- 
tian experience? Faith, in the order of time, is the 
primal positive factor of all experience, and deter- 
mines its character. Experience is higher in its 
order, the higher the character of the faith that 
begets it. The personal is the highest realm of 
faith ; and the highest order of faith is that which is 
placed in a person. The highest faith is in the 
highest person. The constitutional faith of religion 
is in the personal God ; and the faith which begets 
Christianity is in the personal Christ. As faith is 
spiritual, it is therefore the positivity of the spiritual 



56 The Living Atonement 

which lies at the foundation of religion, and also 
underlies empirical or sense-knowledge. In fact, it 
is the beginning of all knowledge and experience. 

In Christian experience, faith may be first in the 
order of time ; but in importance love is first. Love 
is unquestionably the strongest positive factor in 
religion and in life. Christian love is the subjective 
positivity within the soul, and the personal Christ 
is its objective positivity. No one in the world 
of religion has awakened love of so rich and exalted 
character, so potent for spiritual good, as has Jesus 
Christ. When the Lord of life has won his way to 
the place of love supreme, all other loves and inter- 
ests, and all thought are organized into happy sub- 
servience. The Christian theologian is positive in 
his theology in proportion as his head is ruled by 
his heart in love for Jesus Christ. 

The thought that grows not old is the thought of 
love. Man's thought about redeeming love may pass 
away ; but this love abides. Positive theology is the 
love-thought of God and man interwoven as warp 
and woof. Its patterns vary, but its fabric is 
everywhere shot through with the golden thread of 
redemption, and with the scarlet thread of evangel- 
ism. Love responds to love, as mind to mind. The 
iridescent spring of Christian love issues forth in an 
ever-widening river of service, which in sparkling 
current flows gladly down the glades of human 
needs, singing its way to the infinite ocean of love 
divine whence at first it came. 



Positive Theology and the Atonement 57 

The theology which grows out of devotedness to 
a person, is positive in sentiment and thought as 
related to that person. Positive theology has senti- 
ment as an essential element; but it is not a senti- 
mentalism devoid of thought and reason. It is 
thought and reason at their best and in the highest 
service. Let us not decry sentiment. A soldier's 
patriotism and a mother's love are sentiment. The- 
ology, without sentiment, is petrified. It is then 
as a human body without nerves. Were it all 
sentiment it would be as a body all nerves — a 
mere jelly. 

Sentiment does not weaken theology: it strength- 
ens it. Sentiment does not mar nor mystify, it 
beautifies and clarifies. Under the pressure of its 
power theology crystallizes. It imparts the beauty 
of clarity and the power of perspicuity. It is the 
outcome of the balancing and blending of religious 
thought and feeling: it results from wedding the 
Christian heart to the Christian brain. These two 
that God hath thus joined together, let not man put 
asunder. Henceforth they live and serve as one. 
Positive theology, the child of this royal wedding, 
is heir of universal popularity and will therefore 
reign one day as queen of the intellectual realm and 
empress of the sciences. 

Positive theology is the truth about God in or- 
derly arrangement adapted to express the normal 
appreciation of human thought and feeling in re- 
sponse to the divine love and sacrifice: it is the re- 



58 The Living Atonement 

fating of all lower forms of religious truth to Him 
who is the preeminent, personal truth. It is for 
service rather than for speculation, for the soul 
rather than for science, and for the individual rather 
than for the intellectual fraction of himself. Its 
point of view is that of a sinner saved by Jesus 
Christ and responding to him in thought, feeling, 
and will. The feeling expressed by it is as impor- 
tant as its thought, for the moral and religious 
results of feeling are greater than those of thought. 
More thought arises from feeling than feeling from 
thought. Whatever their relative values as sources 
of theology, both are needed. Neither alone is suf- 
ficient. Positive theology must express both thought 
and feeling, but mere thought and feeling saves no 
one. When not moved by the thought and feeling 
of Christ, theology invariably tends to become neg- 
ative and empty. 

The term " positive " is relative, and has there- 
fore various shades of meaning, according to the 
nature of that to which it is related. Positive 
theology is practical; it is positive in service to the 
Christ and the kingdom. The greatest positivity 
possible is that of helpfulness in the great struggle 
of God and man zvith sin. The contest of the ages 
is with iniquity. Christian theology must therefore 
be positive in saving truth. The gospel of the Son 
of God belongs to this order, because it is the story 
of the redeeming love of God. Any truths, how- 
ever valuable and positive in other realms, which 



Positive Theology and the Atonement 59 

are made to discredit and displace this gospel, are 
negative in theology and most traitorous in the 
divine war with sin. 

Positive theology blots out the distinction be- 
tween theology and religion, for it is the theology 
of practical Christianity. It is the working knowl- 
edge of the servant of Christ. Systematic theology 
is like the science of mathematics ; positive theology 
is like the working knowledge of an engineer. 
There is a profound difference between the theo- 
retical and the practical. Positive theology is 
theology applied; it is positive in relation to the 
work of extending and building up the kingdom of 
God. It is not so much the theology about the 
Christian life as the theology of that life; not so 
much the theology about Christian service as the 
theology of that service. 

II. How comes it that Jesus Christ is the dominant 
subject of positive theology, and his atonement its 
central doctrine ? These questions may be answered 
in turn. Who Jesus Christ is and what he has done 
for us, are one thing ; and the faith and love which 
give him his place and make his work in us pos- 
sible are another. Faith in and love for him define 
the heart of a living Christianity. These primal 
forces of Christian life must be explained if we are 
to understand the life and theology growing out of 
them. They ultimately bring to the surface the 
organizing idea of Christianity, the atonement, even 



60 The Living Atonement 

as they suggest the organizing personality of Chris- 
tianity, the Christ. They point to a relationship, 
grounded in the truth of what he does in meeting 
spiritual needs. This personal relationship to Christ 
must be rooted in life's deepest need, justified by 
the highest service, and revealed in fullest by a 
resultant life. This vital relation is, in fact, a 
theological revelation in itself. 

The relation of the believer to Christ finds ex- 
planation in the working principle of Christian sal- 
vation. The center of Christianity is not a doctrine, 
but a person; and the working principle of the sal- 
vation which it offers, is adjustment to that person. 
Christ is not a creed; he is a living Redeemer. He 
becomes our Saviour, not by accepting what he says 
about God, but by accepting him as the way to God ; 
not by receiving his code of ethics, but by treating 
him as the power that makes for personal righteous- 
ness ; not by believing statements about him, but by 
believing him; and not by attempting to do the 
works which he did, but by making it possible for 
him to do in us the works which he can. He taught 
this when he said : " This is the work of God, that 
ye believe in him whom God hath sent." 

The working principle of salvation is exercising 
faith in the living Lord. Jesus said repeatedly that 
faith in himself is indispensable to salvation. Faith 
without personal relationship is but a barren in- 
tellectuality. The irreducible minimum in the 
means of salvation is the personal relationship of 



Positive Theology and the Atonement 61 

faith in the risen Saviour. The most subtle heresy 
is that which teaches that salvation may be obtained 
by Christ's sayings only. The teachings of the Lord, 
apart from the living Lord himself, are sure to be 
misinterpreted and become a dead letter in the mat- 
ter of salvation. They are misinterpreted, when they 
are made to teach that anything other than faith 
in Christ, is sufficient to save. Being social in its 
nature, the human soul can be saved only by a social 
relationship. Without living contact by means of 
the reciprocity of personal faith in and with the 
Christ, he cannot give life. Eternal life is life in 
Christ, a permanent life-relationship with the 
Eternal, a becoming through the Son an integral 
part of the everlasting life of God. 

Again, devotion to the Lord arises from the reality 
of his response to the man's spiritual needs, and 
from the completeness of human satisfaction result- 
ing from his salvation. This actuality of devoted- 
ness has back of it a reality of experience. It is the 
established conviction and certainty of Christian ex- 
perience that Jesus Christ fills the measureless void 
of the soul's need, and that reaching into the lowest 
depths of its nature he quickens all with the won- 
drous vitality within himself. This satisfaction deep- 
ens as life proceeds; and the vaster revelation of 
Christ's helpfulness in all the problems, perplexities, 
relations, and tasks of life, is then given room to 
shine forth. As Christian experience is increased 
in intensity through service to the kingdom, love 



62 The Living Atonement 

for Christ becomes the stronger and fuller, and 
knowledge of him the broader and more positive. 

III. Intense Christian experience tends to pro- 
duce virile statements of its facts. The strength of 
heart beat is recorded in the force of pulse-throbs. 
The more intense and positive the religious ex- 
perience, the stronger will be the expression of its 
central thought, its organizing idea. The organific 
truth of Christian life cannot fail to be expressed in 
one way and another by that life. Coming back to 
the story of the Gospels, one finds at the heart of 
them and of the New Testament as a whole, the 
same theme which has occupied the central place in 
all evangelism ever since, viz., " the redemption 
that is in Christ Jesus." 

The theology of Christian experience, with 
Christ's redemption as its organizing idea, would 
not long remain positive, if it had not the power to 
originate that experience, or were not used to that 
end. John said : " And hereby we know that we 
know him, if we keep his commandments. " The 
positive in religious life is the practical. There is 
no faith in Christ without obedience to him. Bear- 
ing witness to the Christ to the end of the 
growth of his kingdom, is a primary command. 
The life imparted by him must thus express itself or 
perish. This compels our effort to state in some 
form what the Lord is to us because of what he has 
done for us. A working theology infallibly clusters 



Positive Theology and the Atonement 63 

its thought about the redemptive work of Christ. 
This sacrifice is intuitively accorded the place of ut- 
most significance. The mark of healthy spiritual life 
and effectiveness in evangelism is the stability of 
the person and cross of Christ as a center. Prog- 
ress in theology and increase in its power of serv- 
ice are marked by higher, clearer, and more prac- 
tical appreciation of Christ's atonement. He who 
is educated into giving Christ and his death a 
diminished emphasis is a graduate in unfitness to 
reach the lost. This is well illustrated in an inci- 
dent related not long ago in Plymouth Church, 
Brooklyn, N. Y., by " Gipsy " Smith : 

The late Charles A. Berry, of Wolverhampton, England, 
was a great friend of mine. Jowett, of Birmingham, told 
me once, on a train while traveling to Oxford, this story: 
" Gipsy, I have a story to tell you, a beautiful story from 
Berry's own lips. He sat in his study in Bolton, Lan- 
cashire, late one night, when every one else had gone to 
bed ; and there came a knock at his door. When he opened 
it, there stood a typical Lancashire girl with her shawl 
over her head and clogs on her feet. 'Are you the 
minister?' she asked. 'Yes.' 'Then I want you to come 
and get my mother in.' Berry, thinking it was some 
drunken brawl, said, ' You must get a policeman.' ' Oh, 
no ! ' said the girl, ' my mother is dying, and I want 
you to get her into salvation.' . . 

" The girl was determined, and I had to go. I found the 
place was a house of ill fame. In the lower rooms they 
were drinking and telling lewd stories; and upstairs I 
found the poor woman dying. I sat down and talked 
about Jesus as the beautiful example; and extolled him as 



64 The Living Atonement 

leader and teacher. She looked at me out of her eyes of 
death and said, ' Mister, that's no good for the likes of 
me. I don't want an example, I'm a sinner.' And Berry 
said to me, 'Jowett, there I was, face to face with a 
poor soul dying, and had nothing to tell her. I had no 
gospel, and I thought of what my mother had taught me; 
and I told her the old story of God's love in Christ dying 
for sinful men, whether I believed it or not' ' Now you're 
getting at it,' said the woman. ' That's what I want. 
That's the story for me/ And Berry turned to Jowett 
and said, ' I got her in ; and I got in myself .' " * 

Sin is still the same; human nature is the same; 
and Christ is " the same yesterday, and to-day, and 
forever." What has worked in saving the lost, 
must therefore still work. The Holy Spirit has 
ever blessed the message of Christ's redemption. 
Christian experience cannot displace its organizing 
idea and remain Christian. Paul says : " I delivered 
unto you first of all that which I also received ; that 
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. 2 

A positive, or working theology, must of necessity 
commend itself both to God and man. One could 
challenge the world to produce an instance of the 
Holy Spirit being poured out in revival blessing 
on any other than the " Message of Redemption by 
the Cross." It has been well said that the Welsh 
Revival would have been an impossibility without 
the Welsh appreciation of the atonement. What- 
ever theories may be held concerning it, whatever 

1 This incident is referred to by Rev. James Drummond in his 
" Memoir of Charles A. Berry, D. D.," p. 35. 

2 2 Cor. 15:3. 



Positive Theology and the Atonement 65 

the angle of vision from which men may view it, 
in Christian work there is but one place for it — 
the center of doctrine even as Christ is the center 
of personal relationship in Christian life. 

IV. Since it is the redemptive or atoning work 
of Christ which is the central, organizing idea of 
positive theology, the best statement of it possible is 
justly demanded. A description leading to a one- 
sided appreciation of it, is the very thing to be 
avoided. If ever one should pray for deliverance, it 
is when presenting a statement of the atonement that 
he be saved from projecting his mental and spiritual 
limitations into it, as though they belonged there. 
The prayer, however, cannot be fully answered. 

Invariably we project much of ourselves into all 
we see. The higher and more complex the object of 
study, the greater the room for subjective projection. 
The very best that can be done is to provide that the 
projection agree in kind and spirit with that which 
we study. If the personal projection agrees with the 
object of study, there will still be limitation, but 
not that of unfitness, confusion, and distortion. 
For every study there are the prerequisites of dis- 
position and capacity. Every investigation calls for 
specific power and sympathy. Without these there 
is utter unfitness to proceed. The cuttlefish ejects 
its inky sepia into the water: that is its protection. 
An alien mood projects ifs colored sepia : that is its 
misfortune. The greater the subject of study, the 



66 The Living Atonement 

more fatally is one incapacitated for it by absence 
of the power of appreciation and lack of sympathetic 
disposition. 

To the inartistic, or to the color-blind, Rubens' 
" Descent from the Cross " is a confusion of paint 
and a waste of canvas. The atonement is God's 
masterpiece. To the soul without responsive devo- 
tedness to Jesus Christ it is a jumble of uninterest- 
ing mystery. Love to God must ever therefore lead 
the way in exploring the massive mountain range of 
divine sacrifice. The topmost peak of all is Mount 
Calvary. Measuring the heights, and depths, and 
breadths, and lengths of Christ's atonement, we 
must ever use the theodolite of love rather than the 
microscope of criticism. 

When love is the subject, but not the experience 
of a writer, he encloses vacuity with a fence of 
words. There have been descriptions of the atone- 
went to the same effect. Superficial feeling and 
profound thinking do not keep company. It is not 
that the theologian may have too much head; 
rather, he may have too little heart to appreciate the 
atonement. That which is God's sacrifice to make 
man whole, needs the whole man to appreciate it. 
In the rounding out of spiritual development is at- 
tained the symmetry of personality which may ex- 
ercise full power of appreciation. 

No doctrine of our faith calls for more thought 
and heart and soul than the atonement. Only as 
men have emerged from the swamps of selfishness 



Positive Theology and the Atonement 67 

and climbed the steeps of personal sacrifice for the 
kingdom of God, can they have commanding view 
of this divine sacrifice. It costs growth in faith to 
study faith; it costs training in sacrifice to under- 
stand sacrifice. For example, the mind and soul of 
Paul were developed and ripened by service, suf- 
fering, and sacrifice for his Lord. When, therefore, 
he turned his eyes to the scene of sin's tragedy, 
humanity's hope, and redemption's reality, he could 
utter these humble, yet sublime words : " Far be it 
from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ." 

In the cross of Christ I glory, 
Towering o'er the wrecks of time: 

All the light of sacred story 
Gathers round its head sublime. 



THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT 



These illustrations, of the nature and effect of the Death 
of Christ are illustrations, and nothing more. They are 
analogous to the transcendent fact only at single points. 
The fact is absolutely unique. The problem before us is 
to form some conception of the Death of Christ which 
shall naturally account for all these various representa- 
tions of it; and no solution of the problem is to be found 
by attempting to translate these representations, derived 
from transient human institutions and from the mutual 
relations of men, into the Divine and eternal sphere to 
which this great Mystery belongs. . . The descriptions of 
the Death of Christ in the New Testament, as a Sacri- 
fice, a Propitiation, a Ransom, are of infinite practical 
value; but we misapprehend the true principles and 
methods and aims of theological science if we make these 
descriptions the basis of a theory of the Atonement. They 
constitute the authoritative tests of the accuracy of a 
theory. A theory is false if it does not account for and 
explain these descriptions. But to construct a theory we 
must put these descriptions aside, and consider the Death 
of Christ itself, in its real relations to God and man. 
—Rev. R. W. Dale, D. D., LL. D. 



CHAPTER FIVE 

THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT 

In exploring the vast continents of Christian 
thought, let us not forget the islands of the sea, 
both great and small. The great world of theology 
includes the archipelago of the theories of the 
atonement. These theories are attempts to state the 
greatest fact that has ever confronted the human 
mind ; they endeavor to explain the redemptive sacri- 
fice of Jesus Christ. Unconsciously, we may take 
unfitting attitude toward the Lord himself in our 
treatment of these theories. It may be that inas- 
much as we despise one of the least of them, we 
despise him. One purpose of this chapter will be to 
give honor to the theories of the atonement, accord- 
ing to the scale of their worth for positive theology. 

I. The intellectual phase of these theories of the 
atonement is not the only one to be considered. They 
have deep ethical significance and substance. That 
they have had a religious value is a matter of 
history. They have filled a large place, not only in 
Christian thought, but also in spiritual life. In 
them the religious thinking of succeeding genera- 
tions was concentrated. 

7i 



J2 The Living Atonement 

If we are to get the setting of these theories, we 
must take into account the motives which lay back 
of them, the circumstances in which they were pro- 
duced, and the thought-currents which moved in 
their times. In themselves, these theories could not 
have occupied the place and rendered the service 
which they did had they been devoid of ethical 
truth. Christian life is too profoundly spiritual to 
give central place to anything without moral con- 
tent. 

The differences between the theories are not to be 
regarded as evidence that they contradict each other, 
any more than differences among men are to be 
regarded as contradictions of humanity. The the- 
ories are divergences in the truth, not from it. 
Theories of the atonement differ more in color and 
pattern than in warp and woof. They all express 
phases of the truth: "Ye are complete in him." 
Modern theories cannot improve on this, except as 
they state this truth in a way which will more 
readily interpret it to the mind and heart of to-day. 
What counts is not so much the temporary form 
which the truth takes, as the reality and beauty of 
its vital principle. Let us remember that the sa- 
ving efficacy of the atonement was experienced in 
bygone days as fully as now, and that the older 
theories rendered in their day as great service as 
have the later theories in the present time. 

Theories of the atonement were of service in 
cultivating personal relationship with Christ, and 



Theories of the Atonement 73 

in facilitating an intellectual grasp of the mean- 
ing of his great redemptive sacrifice. They as- 
sisted the Christian in appropriating the riches 
of his inheritance. They increased the hold of 
Christ upon human minds and hearts, and en- 
abled him to link lives in closer union in him and 
with him. They gave expression to human appreci- 
ation of the divine means of salvation, formed a 
nucleus for Christian thought, and became the sub- 
stance of preaching and of pragmatic theology. 
They expressed to each period the thought for which 
it was ripe. They mediated the truth for which each 
stage of theological progress called. 

The worthiest appreciation of the theories will be 
the most practical, for they are a sacred trust and 
challenge. They demand that we continue the work 
of theological development. Accumulation, co-or- 
dination, and acceleration define the law of progress. 
Each generation is called of God to advance. Each 
age has its own task before it; but it is a labor 
related to what has already been done. The work 
of the ages is one. God's plans are not desultory. 
Tennyson said: 

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of 
the suns. 1 

The height of present-day achievement could 
not have been reached had not preceding gener- 

1 " Locksley Hall," stanza. 69. 



74 The Living Atonement 

ations toiled up the steep ascent. Let us not count 
it a special merit on our part that we were born 
higher up. Rather, let us think of it as entailing 
greater responsibility. We must not look down 
with disdain upon the slow and weary steps up- 
ward by which humanity reached the plane where we 
began. It will be but a little time until another gen- 
eration will be looking down upon the ground now 
occupied by us. When they do so, may they see on 
our part such an appreciation of preceding thought 
as we would wish posterity to have for ours. 

Any generation is fatally unfitted to make the ad- 
vance which it should when it has a penchant for 
heaping ridicule upon the work of predecessors. 
When appreciation of its past moves downward, 
there is small hope of theology moving upward. 
The conceit that our thought is bound in any case to 
be better than all before it, should be reminded of 
another thing that Tennyson said : 

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good, 
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud." 2 

Due respect for the past does not mean that we 
must blindly adopt all former theories; shut our 
eyes to all their limitations, and in lazy content 
sit down with them the rest of our lives. The 
best appreciation of them will be to produce new 
and better statements. In the spiral ascent in which 

2 " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," stanza ioo. 



Theories of the Atonement 75 

progress usually moves, we may find ourselves near 
the ground occupied by others centuries ago, only 
that we are directly above that ground. The same 
truth, which others held years ago, may be held 
by us also, but in higher relation. For example, 
the institutional or personal statement of the atone- 
ment resembles the substitutional, except that its 
point of view is higher. Truth in the ultimate is 
personal. The personal form gives place and 
value to all other forms. The world is now ripe 
and ready for presentations of the atonement from 
the personal standpoint. A theory of the atonement 
centered in Him who is the atonement has the ad- 
vantage of making possible the adjusting of all the 
preceding theories in its central, mediating truth — 
The Living Atonement. 

II. Theories of the atonement have set forth 
different phases of the righting of sin's wrong 
by the sacrifice of Christ. There is no need of 
a historical review of them, for that work has 
been already done, and in some cases most ex- 
haustively. These reviews are not all as valuable 
as they might have been. The writers have, in many 
instances, lacked sympathy with their subject and 
oftentimes have been too controversial. Imagin- 
ing that all the truth of the atonement could be 
corralled into the single statement of his own theory, 
its author proceeded to show that all other theories 
must have included, in the main, misapprehensions. 



j6 The Living Atonement 

The task of building up a theory has, even in the 
best of men, the tendency to blind them to the worth 
of other theories. A mother can see most beauty 
and promise in her boy; and the theorist finds no 
offspring so fair and well formed as the child of his 
mind. All other theories seem mechanical to the 
man who has a theory of his own. 3 

Some of the phases of this subject set forth by 
theories of the atonement are as follows : Righting by 
the ransom of Christ the wrong of man's captivity 
through sin; righting the wrong to God; to his 
honor and majesty; to his governmental authority; 
to his law ; to his justice ; to his holiness ; and to his 
ethical nature in general. A number of theories 
deal primarily with the means or method of the 
atonement, rather than with its end. Some of these 
are the substitutionary, penitential, obedience-death, 
judgment-death, moral influence, and the " subjec- 
tive " theories in general. There is a good deal of 
overlapping and intermingling of ideas in all these 
statements ; but each according to the ruling ethical 
or religious ideas of the day, expressed appreciation 
of Christ's work of redemption. The ascendence of 
any theory could not be permanent. Christian life 
and thought are in constant motion ; and the general 

3 It might be well to show that this rule still holds true. Doctor 
Mabie, in " The Meaning and Message of the Cross," p. 195, says, 
" I confess at this point, I think Doctor Denny's recent statement 
of the substitutionary principle of the cross is inadequate. It is 
too mechanical." Most men would say that Doctor Mabie's " Judg- 
ment-death " theory is the more mechanical of the two. It is fair 
to say that in his more recent statement, " How Does the Death of 
Christ Save Us? " Doctor Mabie gives in the " Vicario-vital " theory 
an excellent experiential presentation. 



Theories of the Atonement *jj 

ethical advance has ever suggested the incomplete- 
ness of former theories and the need of the new ; and 
in turn the incompleteness of the latter has sug- 
gested the need of still others. Each theory, in try- 
ing to keep up with this advance, tended to over- 
development. As there is no grace of character 
which does not become a vice when unre- 
strained by a counter development of other and 
balancing graces, so there is no truth or theory 
which does not, by undue emphasis and over- 
development, become false, and accumulate by ac- 
cretion the unworthy and absurd. 

In the early days of Christianity no theory of 
the atonement was propounded; but the first which 
did appear well illustrates the matter referred 
to. The wrong of man's spiritual captivity, and 
his emancipation by Christ, are unalloyed truths. 
Our Lord spoke of his life given as " a ran- 
som." Paul too wrote of him " who gave him- 
self a ransom for all." He also said, " Ye are 
bought with a price." In the first theory it was the 
figure of the ransom rather than the truth of spirit- 
ual deliverance which was developed. It is always 
a perilous thing to develop a figure of speech. A 
wise man said, " Obedience to law is the price of 
liberty." If we develop this figure of the price, 
and in making it go on all fours, endeavor to find 
some one to whom it is paid — the jailers of the 
country, mayhap — the ridiculous is then added to 
the sublime, and the true saying brought into dis- 



78 The Living Atonement 

repute. When the first theory took the enlarged 
form which represented the ransom as paid to 
Satan, who was baited by the blood of Christ, 
cheated, and paid in his own coin, the truth of 
spiritual emancipation was buried under a landslide 
of absurdity. 

The number and variety of the theories make 
plain that the many directions in which sin's wrong 
has moved are becoming more and more fully ap- 
prehended. Any theory which presents sin's wrong 
as being righted in one direction only, may be a 
halting-place overnight ; it cannot be a dwelling-place 
for the human mind. For this reason the moral-in- 
fluence theory is not a final statement of the atone- 
ment. That the death of Christ exhibits God's love 
with reconciling influence upon man is indisputable 
truth. That the Christ was subjected to the terrible 
torture and death agony of the cross solely for ex- 
hibition purposes, and that the wrong of sin could 
be fully met in that way, is indubitable error. Such 
an exhibition must be either a by-product, or a 
crime that in itself needs atonement. 

So much for one of the first and one of the later 
theories. There is a statement of the atonement cur- 
rent to-day which practically nullifies all other 
theories. This is " the eternal-atonement theory." 
According to this statement, the death of Christ is 
a temporal and finite exhibition of the infinite and 
eternal suffering of God on account of sin. 

In passing, it may be noticed how the pendulum of 



Theories of the Atonement 79 

human thought, never at rest, swings first to one ex- 
treme and then to the other. In the moral-influence 
theory in its later development, we were assured that 
there was no necessity for atonement so far as the 
divine nature was concerned ; and now, in the eternal- 
atonement theory, it is asserted that there is the ne- 
cessity of a limitless, timeless suffering of the divine 
nature. These extremes of statement indicate en- 
ergy of thought ; but time does not go any faster be- 
cause the pendulum of the clock is made to swing 
more widely. Extremes meet, we are often told. 
They do in this case. The moral-influence theory has 
been objected to because it reduces the meaning of 
the cross. This accusation may as readily be made 
against the eternal-atonement idea. ' Both of these 
statements agree in reducing the meaning of Cal- 
vary primarily to an exhibition. 

The possibility of temporal divine suffering must, 
it is true, be grounded in the passibility of eternal 
God. The spirit of the cross did not have its 
origin at Calvary, for Scripture assures us that 
it was eternal. That this spirit eternally made 
atonement is a very different matter. This the 
word of God nowhere asserts; in fact, it predicates 
the contrary. 

Through his own blood (Christ) entered in once for 
all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption.* 
How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through 
the eternal Spirit (his eternal spirit) offered himself with- 

4 Heb. 9 : 12. 



8o The Living Atonement 

out blemish unto God." Else must he have often suf- 
fered since the foundation of the world . . . but now once 
at the end of the ages hath he been manifested unto the 
abolition of sin by his sacrifice. . . Christ having been once 
offered to bear the sin of many. The offering of the 
body of Jesus once for all. 7 For the death that he died, 
he died unto sin once for all. 8 For when he had offered 
one sacrifice for sins forever. . . For by one offering hath 
he perfected them that are sanctified. 9 

There was one passage of Scripture that seemed 
to give support to the eternal-atonement idea, and 
in fact, awakened it; but it is now agreed by most 
scholars that it was a mistranslation. In the Revised 
version it now reads : " Written from the founda- 
tion of the world in the book of life of the Lamb 
that hath been slain." 10 The translation, as here 
given, is strengthened by a parallel passage a few 
chapters later. It is as follows : " Whose name hath 
not been written in the book of life from the foun- 
dation of the world." X1 

Paul, in writing of the death of Christ, presented 
it as enabling God to be just, not simply to show 
himself just; to make right, not simply to show 
himself right. According to the eternal-atonement 
theory, Paul was wrong; for, if it is true, the 
cross did not so much enable God to be right, as to 
show himself right; not so much to be just, as to 
show himself just. Since there is a square contra- 

B Heb. 9 : 14. 6 Heb. 9 : 26, 28. 7 Heb. 10 : 10. 

8 Rom. 6 : 10. 9 Heb. 10 : 12, 14. 

"Rev. 13 : 8. "Rev. 17 : 8. 



Theories of the Atonement 81 

diction between the two, either Paul or the eternal- 
atonement theory is wrong. 

The incarnation could as reasonably be interpreted 
as exhibiting an eternal incarnation of God, as the 
death of Christ an exhibition of the eternal atone- 
ment. To say that the incarnation was a temporal 
and finite exhibition of the incarnation of God in 
humanity is true; but far from the whole truth. 
To say that the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem was 
not so much the incarnation of God, as the revelation 
of the timeless incarnation of God in human life, is 
to furnish a parallel statement to that in the eternal- 
atonement theory, which says : " The death of 
Christ did not so much make atonement, as reveal 
the eternal atonement." 

The primal fallacy of the eternal-atonement idea, 
or as it is sometimes called, " the internal atone- 
ment," lies in its identifying all divine suffering with 
atonement. This age-long suffering, which sin 
caused God, is part of the great wrong of sin 
and not the righting of this wrong. The agony 
on the cross was vastly more than a show- 
window sample of what fills the shelves of heaven. 
Moreover, eternal atonement for sin, which is not 
eternal, is atonement out of proportion and in super- 
erogation. Even though the divine anticipation of 
sin's wrong and the Redeemer's death was real, it 
was not realization of atonement. Anticipation of a 
wedding is not a marriage. Atonement is a term be- 
longing to social and ethical relations, and cannot 

F 



82 The Living Atonement 

be fitly or fully used to describe an internal state. 
An internal atonement is like an internal apology. 

There are those who reduce the virtue of prayer 
to that of reflex influence. They have a respectable 
philosophy back of their interpretation; but such 
limitation of this active relation to God is no addi- 
tion to the Christian life. There may be a respec- 
table philosophy back of the eternal-atonement idea ; 
but a reduction of the meaning of the cross and its 
Christ, a lessening of the place of the Son of God 
as Redeemer, is no real help to Christianity. That 
which presents Christ in his death as revealing, 
rather than making and becoming atonement, must 
fail to take hold on human hearts and consciences. 
Only that which gives the full and rightful honor 
to the Son of God and his redemption will be 
honored of God among men. 

III. No explanation of the atonement is equal to 
the fact itself. No theory can take the place of the 
atonement. All possible theories cannot exhaust 
the fulness of its meaning. All the paths through a 
field do not make up the field. The size and mineral 
wealth of a plot of ground cannot be estimated by 
measuring the paths which cross it. 

Think of some village green cut into fantastic fig- 
ures by the paths which cross it, and you have a 
picture of the doctrine of the atonement as set 
forth by the combining of all the theories. Theories 
of the atonement are the paths of thought in this 



Theories of the Atonement 83 

great field. Some of them are old and worn deep ; 
some are forsaken and grass-grown. Most of the 
paths meet near the middle of the field. There the 
ground is bare and trodden hard. At this central 
place rival teams of theology meet in spirited con- 
test, just as baseball teams do on the village com- 
mon. 

The danger just now is that we forsake this 
field altogether because of the confusion of the 
paths and the noise of those who meet there. 
Then some have been unkind enough to make the 
place a dumping-ground. The field of the doctrine 
of the atonement is worthy of a better fate. 

Let us not assume, on the one hand, that these 
theories are utterly worthless ; nor, on the other, 
that they are final formulations of truth. An ex- 
clusive theory ever hides more in its shadow than it 
reveals in its light. Have we not noticed at night 
that shadows in the street are darkest where 
they intersect? So it is with theories of the 
atonement. The danger is that we may have the 
deepest shadow at the very heart of the matter. 
The atonement, like many other Christian doctrines, 
impinges everywhere on the transcendent. All the- 
ories of the atonement have, because of this, an un- 
supported end projecting into the unseen beyond. 
They are spring-boards, from which we may plunge 
into the ocean of truth. It is as impossible for them 
to do full justice to the subject with which they deal 
as it is for us to do full justice to them, because of 



84 The Living Atonement 

the vanishing element in them all. Since the atone- 
ment of Christ is unique, there can be neither a per- 
fect illustration nor a wholly satisfactory theory 
of it. 

It is because they have power to direct men 
to the Christ that these theories prove of re- 
ligious value. Better any theory, however im- 
perfect from an apologetic point of view, if it 
is warm in spirituality and strong in loyalty to 
Christ. Better a disjointed truth of faith than 
articulated unbelief. Imperfection that seeks to 
glorify Christ is better than the greatness that aims 
to belittle and oppose him. Not that we wish 
for weakness and imperfection ! Let there be 
breadth of view without shallowness, strength of 
logic without loss of tenderness. Anything that 
will teach us even a small grain of truth about 
Christ's redemption is profoundly welcome. History 
has built for us a stairway of theories by which we 
may ascend to higher comprehension of the atone- 
ment; and in a grander than St. Peter's at Rome 
worship within the cathedral of Truth Him who is 
the Living Truth. 

The worthiest appreciation of the atonement is, 
after all, not from the apex of a pyramid of theories. 
As a matter of fact, no man has an appreciative out- 
look on the atonement one inch higher than the 
height of his personal sacrifice for the world's re- 
demption. The proportions of the atonement, as 
they appear to us, correspond with the measure of 



Theories of the Atonement 85 

the spirit of the cross in our lives. The theories are 
but the echoes of human heart-beats. The stronger 
the throb of love for Christ, the louder and clearer 
will be the theory echoing it. In the larger view, 
each theory is a new victory in the age-long war 
with human ignorance of the greatness of Christ. 

The real theories of the atonement which we 
have, are not those put on paper and defended in 
argument. They are the lives we live. No man 
can vote without expressing his theory of govern- 
ment. No man can live the Christian life and en- 
gage in its service without expressing his theory 
of the atonement. Many a man votes right, who 
could not well express his theory of politics. The 
lives of Christians, far better than their words or 
writings, express their regard for Christ and his 
redemption. It is well that there are vastly more 
life-theories than paper-theories. The life-theory 
is the theory with life in it. Such theories cannot 
be expounded nor taught. 

Thought is deeper than all speech; 

Feeling deeper than all thought ; 
Souls to souls can never teach 

What unto themselves was taught. 



VI 



THE CHRISTIAN CONFLICT AND THE 
SABELLIAN COMPROMISE 



Now it has sometimes been apprehended that the larger 
and deeper study of our Lord's humanity would, in a 
measure, impair the sense of his deity. There has been 
a not unnatural fear of approaching too near him, of 
" knowing Christ after the flesh." His manhood and his 
deity have been treated as truths in sharp antithesis, each 
in turn to be guarded from the risk of damaging ad- 
missions. To combine the two great verities into one 
harmonious whole, has ever been the difficulty of 
theologians. . . 

The vital element in the great revelation is atonement 
for sin. So in the Epistle to the Colossians. There, in 
the unveiling of the mystery of God, redemption, the for- 
giveness of sins, stands first; then comes the wonderful 
description of Him who is the image of the invisible God, 
the " First-born of all creation " ; and after the resources 
of language have been exhausted in the expression of his 
divine greatness, the apostle returns to this as the climax 
of all, that by the blood of the cross is the universal 
reconciliation. Atonement is first and last; and it is 
the law of sacrifice which conveys to us the deepest 
significance, both theological and ethical, of the divine 
humanity of the Word, the Son of man, the Son of God. 

— Samuel G. Green, D. D. 



CHAPTER SIX 

THE CHRISTIAN CONFLICT AND THE SABELLIAN 
COMPROMISE 

The doctrine of the atonement is the center of the 
battle ground of theology. There is abundant reason 
for the clash of arms at this point. The whole 
ground of Christian doctrine has been fought over 
time and again; but at this strategic center the 
battle is severest. There the utmost strength of 
opposing forces is pitted in deadly contest. The 
atonement is the key position in Christian theology. 
On the fate of this doctrine hangs the destiny of 
our whole faith. 

In the doctrine of the atonement all schools of 
thought focus their differences. The cross is the 
testing-place of religious affinities. There spiritual 
allegiance is plainly manifested, and every spiritual 
disposition takes out-and-out attitude. Nowhere 
else is spiritual vision so thoroughly tried. In the 
searchlight glare of Calvary every system is clearly 
revealed and every philosophy stands unmasked. 
There every one must declare himself. When face 
to face with the death of Christ, men make unique 
decision what to do with him, what he may be to 
them, and what he shall be forever more. 

89 



90 The Living Atonement 

In presenting the doctrine of the atonement, every- 
thing depends upon the view of the person of Christ. 
This is all the more manifest when the atonement is 
presented from a personal and experiential point of 
view. He who is the atonement, must be known, if 
we are rightly to appreciate its place and value. It 
is redemption that gives to Christ's deity the most 
practical interest. Each reflects the depth of mean- 
ing in the other. 

I. History repeats itself. Another great strug- 
gle as to the person of Christ is now on. The 
present-day critical movement has been leading di- 
rectly to it. Criticism was bound sooner or later to 
fasten its attention upon the Christ. There it will 
most of all manifest the insufficiency of its processes. 
Between rational and experiential criticism there 
will be an Armagedon contest over the person of 
Christ. 

The threatened Unitarian defection, of which 
Pres. A. H. Strong speaks in the introduction of 
the new edition of his " Systematic Theology," is 
no nightmare. Let there be no fear as to the out- 
come of the struggle. It will end as it did in the 
first instance. It will clear the atmosphere and 
place where they belong, men who have not under- 
stood what is fair, or who had not the courage to 
place themselves. This contest, which has already 
begun, will demonstrate that Christ is still a stone of 
stumbling or of building; still a rock that grinds to 



The Sabellian Compromise 91 

powder or furnishes an imperishable foundation. 
His richness of revelation must blight or bless. 

There is yet another reason why the path of the 
present lies unavoidably through this old battle 
ground. It is a direct outcome of our failure to 
obey a primary command of Christ. It is a thunder- 
toned proclamation of the fact that a large part of 
the Christian world has been practically idle in the 
task of evangelizing the world. The order in the 
Great Commission has been changed, and the school 
is now placed first. The college, rather than the 
Christ, is in this faith the hope of the world. 
Hence, to the university, rather than to missions, 
has the colossal giving been flowing. 

For the moment the school has gained by this; 
but it stands in danger of losing its greatest place 
of honor, that of being forefront in the work of 
Christianizing the world. The kingdom of God 
cometh by education, only when preceded and ac- 
companied by evangelization. Education, when not 
subsidiary to evangelization, when uninspired by 
Christ's missionary ideal, becomes a side-weight to 
the Christian structure, and eventually topples it 
over, carrying a large part of the building with it. 
Disobedience is ever a process of weakening faith, 
and obedience of strengthening it. Faith in Christ's 
deity always waxes or wanes with faithfulness or 
unfaithfulness to his commands. As to freedom 
and to truth, disloyalty always costs more than 
loyalty. When the South would not give liberty to 



92 The Living Atonement 

its slaves, it had to surrender its son's lives. When 
the Christian Church refuses liberty to the captives 
of pagan darkness, she must lose forever many of 
her sons and soldiers in the rebellion of heresy. 

There is one most hopeful sign of the times to 
which reference should here be made. The Lay- 
men's Missionary Movement is the mark of a com- 
ing awakening to normal Christianity. As one re- 
members the fate that overtook in the early Christian 
centuries hundreds of churches in North Africa, 
which substituted theological for missionary zeal, 
when he ponders also on what it has cost in conse- 
quence for the evangelization of the " Dark Con- 
tinent," he must thank God the more that we may 
be saved from such withering and such adding to the 
world's burden. 

II. For the moment the discussion pivots about 
the Virgin Birth. In considering the nature of 
Christ's person, very much depends upon whether his 
divinity is said to be integral or additional, concep- 
tional or plenary, a divine begetting or a life attain- 
ment. If his divinity is but a super-addition to natural 
generation, any of the children of Joseph and Mary, 
and also any one else could have been the Christ. 
As many christs are then possible as there are per- 
sons whom God could have perfectly filled with him- 
self. If Christ's personality was originated and con- 
stituted along natural lines, we have the greatest 
miracle of personality to be accounted for by an 



The Sabellian Compromise 93 

infilling and addition which do not originate and 
constitute it. We are also given no adequate ex- 
planation why but one has thus been filled with God. 
Must not the method of the incarnation have been 
as unique as was the person of " the Only Begotten 
of the Father " ? 

It is permissible to speak of the divinity, but not 
of the deity of humanity. The term " deity," as 
applied to Christ, is, therefore, preferable. Man 
has undoubtedly the divinity implied in his having 
been made in the image and likeness of God. God 
is Spirit; but man has the physical as an essential 
part of his nature. A disembodied spirit is not full, 
normal humanity as we know it. This is one of the 
messages of Christ's incarnation and resurrection. 
In proportion as physical limitation is inherently a 
part of man's normal being, it is wrong to speak of 
the humanity of God. In proportion as there is the 
same moral likeness and the similar spiritual sub- 
stance in both God and man, we may speak of the 
divinity of man and of the humanity of God. Even 
if man were all of spiritual substance, Creator-Spirit 
and created spirit are far from identical. The Un- 
created Being, wholly spiritual, is not the same as 
the created being, partly spiritual and partly phys- 
ical. The divinity in man is not identical in kind 
with the Divinity Eternal which made him. The 
view that deity and humanity are not at all different 
in nature lowers God without raising man. 

There is a special sense in which the humanity of 



94 The Living Atonement 

God may be mentioned. It is the divine humanity 
in Jesus Christ. In the incarnation God entered into 
vital union with humanity, and therein embodied the 
divine life and person of the Son. We have kin- 
ship with the Christ because of his humanity and 
deity, but most of all because of his humanity. 
When speaking of his person after the incarnation, 
there should be no exclusive emphasis obscuring 
either his humanity or his deity. When his hu- 
manity is denied, we tend to emphasize it ; and when 
his deity is questioned, on this we lay greater stress. 
Unless there was divinity in humanity, the incar- 
nation could not have taken place. Unless in the 
nature of Jesus Christ there is humanity and di- 
vinity, the range of our relationship with God is im- 
measurably smaller than we had supposed. The 
union of humanity and deity in the person of Christ 
is the most sublime relational achievement ever 
effected ; and it is the most precious of all relational 
facts ever declared, containing the revelation of 
salvation, of atonement, and of life. 

III. The person of Jesus Christ is the embrace of 
human and divine natures. He is a divine person 
including human nature. He is God living a human 
life. From what he said (and no other source of 
information is open) we learn that he exercised the 
functions of personality before his incarnation. His 
divine personality was first. What his person is 
now, has come about by the mystery of his becoming 



The Sabellian Compromise 95 

flesh, personally including human life within the 
divine, and merging his uncreated life into the 
realm and limitation of created human life. 

To such statements our Unitarian friends will not, 
of course, assent. Usually they object that such 
is nothing less than Tritheism; but the tritheist 
has existed only in the imagination of the Unitarian 
apologist. Tritheism means three separate gods ; 
Trinitarianism means three persons in one God. 
Trinitarians have never taught the rival deities 
which tritheism implies. There have been crude 
representations of Trinitarian belief that did not suf- 
ficiently guard against the possibility of this mis- 
representation. Let us remember that Tritheism is 
not the only thing to be feared. When a man has 
become so devoutly afraid of it that he loses all 
dread of Unitarianism, his fear of Charybdis has 
landed him within the grasp of the monster in the 
cave of Scylla. As long as Unitarian belief results 
in lack of spiritual fervor and evangelistic aggres- 
siveness, it is to be dreaded. Unitarians themselves 
have deplored times without number the lack of 
passion and enthusiasm manifest within their body. 
This lack could not fail to result, for the aban- 
donment of Christ's deity cuts a main nerve of de- 
votion to him, and leaves the body corporate without 
normal feeling and power. Dr. W. W. Peyton says : 

Robert Elsmere and Roger V/endover, Matthew Arnold 
and Doctor Martineau have fallen into a species of Chris- 
tian life which is not in the long succession of the broad 



96 The Living Atonement 

Christian life rolling these centuries, but which has struck 
out from it, and is a genuine variety, distinguished by 
the dominance of the intellect. They should be content 
with it, but not charge with mythology or superstition or 
unveracity what is really the essence of the Christian 
enthusiasm of these centuries. They know that their 
type of life has not at any time shown the Christian pas- 
sion, or performed the Christian function. 1 

It should be recognized that it is a battle of 
defense, not of choice, that is now forced upon 
Trinitarians. In this matter Christian belief is 
battling for its own existence. Its organific idea, 
the keystone in the arch of its truth, is the sacrifice 
of God in Christ. It is agreed on all hands that the 
highest thing in the universe is personality. If 
Jesus had not personal preexistence, God gained in- 
finitely by his birth. He did not then sacrifice; he 
gained what he had not before, the Christ-person, 
the highest and best personality the world has seen. 
The incarnation was, therefore, a gain, rather than a 
sacrifice. Similarly, the death of Christ was not that 
of the one who made us, suffering with and for us. 
It was not a divine person who took upon himself 
our sins. It was a good man, a God-filled man only. 
" God so loved the world that he " had no " only 
begotten Son " to give ; or, if his willingness to die 
for the world, made Christ the Son of God in the 
unique sense, " God so loved the world that he " 
did not " give his only begotten Son," he then begot 

1 " Memorabilia of Jesus," p. 13. 



The Sabellian Compromise 97 

him. Jesus did not in the incarnation " empty him- 
self " of heavenly glory. The " Kenosis " was a 
" Pleroma." Surely such an emptying of divine 
sacrifice leaves Christian judgment no choice of 
decisions in the matter. 

IV. In every contest there are those who propose 
a compromise. Often such solution of the difficulty 
is to the advantage of both parties. The truth may 
lie between opposite forms of statement. Sometimes, 
however, compromise is impossible, for the contest 
is between truth and error, between righteousness 
and wickedness, between liberty and slavery, or be- 
tween right and wrong. In such cases an offer of 
compromise is but the plan of the foe to gain time 
to build a midway fort or to dig concealed pits like 
those into which the English cavalry fell at Ban- 
nockburn. Acceptance of compromise when the 
contest is unavoidable and without quarter, is but 
holding out hands for the manacles, to be followed 
by imprisonment and death. Compromise may be an 
angel of God, or it may be a trap of the devil. 

The compromise offered in the struggle with Uni- 
tarianism is not by any means a new one. It ap- 
peared as early as ante-Nicene days. It is Sabel- 
lianism. It cannot end a contest which, in its very 
nature, is truceless. It will but prolong the fight. 
If it is not " straight from the pit," it certainly is a 
pit into which many a good rider has tumbled, to 
be unhorsed and captured by the enemy. No com- 



98 The Living Atonement 

promise, such as Sabellianism proposes, is possible 
as to the deity of Christ. If it is conceded that he is 
divine in other respects than in his personality, the 
concession is not worth having. Such a remnant 
of divinity is not compromise, but abandonment, 
retreat, and defeat. If the person of Christ is not 
deity, his divinity has no special meaning. 

The Sabellian compromise with Unitarianism 
cannot be overlooked, for many who profess to be- 
lieve still in the divinity of Christ, have adopted it. 
This means that a substitution of divine mode in 
place of divine person, is agreed to; and also that 
God is one person. Here the real Unitarian in- 
wardness of the compromise comes out. Sabellian- 
ism teaches that God is one person, revealed under 
three modes of manifestation, and that Christ is 
divine as a manifestation, but not as a person. 

As far as the person of Christ is concerned, Sa- 
bellianism differs not one whit from Unitarianism in 
its conclusions. Nevertheless, most men feel that if 
Christ is not deity as well as humanity, if he is a 
person manifesting divinity, not divinity manifest in 
person, and if he is only the manifestation of God, 
not God manifest, he is as helpless as we. Less than 
deity could not mediate between God and humanity. 
As Principal Fairbairn says: 

The Sabellian notion is as shallow as it is false; it may- 
satisfy the intellect which thinks that the mysteries of the 
divine nature are amply explained if stated in the terms 
which can be worked into the processes of formal logic. 



The Sabellian Compromise 99 

But the supreme necessity of faith is one with the ultimate 
necessity of thought — viz., a God who can be related to the 
universe, one who is not an infinite abstraction or empty 
simplicity, but who is by nature a living and, as it were, 
productive and producing Being. 2 

Sabellianism fails to give place to the very reve- 
lation of God which it agrees, is in Jesus Christ. 
The personality of the Father and of the mutual 
relations between the Son and the Father, are struc- 
tural in the Lord's thought and life. Manifestations 
cannot enjoy fellowship and love each other. Sa- 
bellianism takes away the personality of the Father 
as surely as it does the deity of the Son. Accord- 
ing to it, the Father is merely one of the trinity 
of manifestations ; and, since there is only one per- 
son in the deity, he is but a fatherly manifestation, 
not a divine Father in person. Praying after the 
Sabellian order we should say, not : " Our Father 
who art in heaven," but : " Our Fatherly mode of 
heavenly manifestation." When we have replaced 
the three persons of the Trinity with three such 
abstractions as Sabellianism proposes, God becomes 
infinitely distant, and the Father can no longer draw 
nigh unto us in the person of his Son. It would be 
no longer possible to say : 

Near, so very near to God; 
Nearer I cannot be; 
For in the person of his Son 
I am as near as he. 

2 " The Place of Christ in Modern Theology," p. 398. 



VII 

PERSONALITY AND THE TRINITY 



The Fathers, who used the language which has been 
inserted in the creeds, and generally adopted in the church, 
never thought, when they used to speak of three persons 
in one God, of speaking of such three persons as they 
would speak of persons and personality among created 
beings. . . They held that the Father is the Head and 
Fountain of all Deity, from whom the Son and Holy Spirit 
are from all eternity derived, but so derived as not to be 
divided from the Father ; but they are in the Father, and 
the Father in them, by a certain inhabitation. So, then, 
though they acknowledged the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost to be really three persons, yet they held them 
to have no divided or separate existence, as three different 
men have; but to be intimately united and conjoined one 
to another, and to exist in each other, and by the said 
ineffable inhabitation to pervade or permeate one another. 

— Bishop Browne. 



CHAPTER SEVEN 

PERSONALITY AND THE TRINITY 

Some of the theological writers of the present day 
have been so interested in their own work, that they 
have not taken time to watch the forward movement 
in other lines of study. They have failed in some 
instances to keep track of the wonderful strides that 
sociology and psychology have taken. The result 
has been that psychology and sociology abandoned 
long ago, have been incorporated into some of the 
present-day theology. It is painfully amusing to 
note that the newer the theology, the older has been 
the psychology and sociology incorporated into some 
of it. The new wine having burst the old wine- 
skins, in the emergency there was pressed into serv- 
ice the Sabellian urn. No wonder, then, that the 
ashes of the dead are now found in the theological 
wineglass of the living. 

While Sabellianism is in reality but Unitarian- 
ism in another form, the reason for its revival is 
interesting. It is the transitionary condition which 
has for some time existed in theology and in all 
lines of study in general. Along the border-line of 
advance misapprehension and confusion are sure to 
reign. The general character of the advance has 

103 



104 The Living Atonement 

rendered adjustment between the different branches 
of study doubly slow. Old forms of statement are 
being used to convey meanings they cannot utter; 
and old heresies are being revived and restated as 
progressive thinking. These are the handicaps of 
the new movement; and the sooner they are re- 
moved the better. 

Some of our modern theological writers, when 
discussing personality and the trinity, have informed 
us that personality is self-consciousness, self-in- 
clusiveness, and separateness. They argue that three 
such persons in the Godhead would inevitably mean 
three separate gods. If their definition of person- 
ality did not contain outworn psychology and dis- 
credited sociology, their conclusion as to the Trinity 
would be correct. That personality is not what 
they say, every pertinent text-book in the schools 
to-day asserts. There is not a solitary living psy- 
chologist or sociologist who would agree to this 
definition of personality as given by some of our 
new theologians. 

I. To begin with, it is consciousness, not self- 
consciousness, which is fundamental in personality. 
Self-consciousness is but one form of consciousness. 
It is that particular form which has self as its ob- 
ject. Self is not by any means the only possible 
object of consciousness. Some time ago Prof. 
James Ward, of Cambridge, set forth the truth 
that all consciousness is a subject-object process, in 



Personality and the Trinity 105 

which the object cannot exist apart from the sub- 
ject, nor the subject apart from the object, and that 
self-consciousness is precisely the same in process 
as consciousness in general. 1 

God is a person. He is an infinite person. Ac- 
cording to this definition of personality, he is infinite 
separateness, infinite self-inclusiveness, and infinite 
self-consciousness. How infinite separateness and 
infinite self-consciousness could ever get away from 
itself to create, it is hard to imagine. If God is 
infinite self-inclusiveness, there is nothing outside 
him, and all creation must be God over again. There 
is, then, no non-self from which to separate himself 
in his self-consciousness. With this view of divine 
personality, no consciousness in the universe is pos- 
sible but that of God. He can be only self-conscious, 
for there is nothing but himself to be the object of 
his consciousness. This is the pantheistic conscious- 
ness of nature, in which God is conscious only in 
the consciousness of nature. This is Spinoza's view 
over again. In it divine personality disappears al- 
together. This definition of personality leads 
straight to a pantheism which denies the existence of 
divine personality. 

A god who is fundamentally self-conscious, is 
morally unworthy. Self-consciousness is the psy- 
chological characteristic of selfishness. Infinite self- 
consciousness is infinite selfishness. The more per- 

1 " Encyclopaedia Britarmica," art. "Psychology"; "Naturalism 
and Agnosticism,'' Vol. II, p. ii2ff. 



106 The Living Atonement 

sonality is exercised in self-consciousness, the more 
it grows unhealthy and shrinks. In what way God's 
loving and self-sacrificing nature could express itself 
in infinite exclusiveness and self-consciousness, it 
would be difficult to state. President Forrest says: 

In one sense, indeed, personality is the most inclusive 
as well as the most exclusive of realities; the most univer- 
sal as well as the most individual. The true definition of 
it may perhaps be its capacity for love; not for self-con- 
sciousness, but for self-sacrifice and life in others. 2 

Each person of the Trinity has self-conscious- 
ness, but not as a fundamental. Each divine per- 
son is conscious of others, rather than of himself; 
but the divine Mind is still a unity of consciousness, 
an infinite interconsciousness in complementary 
interblending. If it be said that the three subject- 
object processes of consciousness in the three per- 
sons of the Trinity would involve the same sepa- 
rateness of consciousness that humanity exhibits, it 
may be replied that consciousness in humanity is 
not what it is in Deity. Our moral nature affects 
all our psychological processes; and human char- 
acter is far from that of God in ethical quality. 
What the consciousness of a sinless person is like, 
our experience does not tell us. One thing is 
known, however — the more a man becomes like God, 
the less self-conscious he becomes. A good man 
is brother-conscious rather than self-conscious. 

When self-inclusiveness and separateness are 

8 " The Christ of History and Experience," p. 199. 



Personality and the Trinity 107 

named as characteristics of personality, there is 
made explicit denial of its fundamental in the social 
nature, without which personality would be reduced 
to an empty shell. Separateness is but self-inclusive- 
ness stated negatively. There is no personality in 
heaven or on earth of which separateness would not 
be defect and stultification. It is distinctiveness 
that is a fundamental in personality. Personality 
is individuality; it is the distinctiveness of a social 
unity. Sociology teaches us that a man wholly apart 
by himself, is no man. Distinctiveness means that 
we are not facsimile repetitions of each other, for 
in this case the mechanical would replace the social. 
Each person would have nothing to give to others 
but what the other already had. The basis of social 
service lies in this distinctiveness and incomplete- 
ness of individual personality. Normal personality 
is socially inseparable and individually distinctive. 
Being wholly alike or wholly separate, we should 
cease to be persons. There is a social unity which is 
differentiated into personality. Without that social 
unity, its differentiation in individuality would be 
impossible. 

II. The social nature of personality is so pro- 
nounced that in the existence of one person only, 
the term would lose its meaning. Let it be repeated, 
then, that the word, " person " implies the existence 
of others of the same order. Those who assert that 
there is but one person in the Godhead, are consist- 



108 The Living Atonement 

ent in passing on to the adoption of pantheistic im- 
personality. That is the logical terminus of this 
road. Some, of course, rest by the way, because 
they do not care as much for the terminus as they 
do for the road thither. 

A solitary divine personality is the deity of 
vacuity. The social nature is the center of the life 
of personality. The social lives in and by the social. 
The social nature of personality can have no true 
content for its life, but that of other social lives. 
A person does not live at all except in social reci- 
procity, becoming the content of other lives, and in 
turn, having other lives become the content of his 
own. In God is found the original of man's social 
nature, for he is the original of man's ethical nature, 
and the moral cannot exist without the social. We 
cannot look to the divine nature for the original 
pattern of moral life, without at the same time look- 
ing there for the original pattern of social life. 
Either God is social, or he is not moral in nature. 
Either God is a social being, or there is no life of 
personality in the Godhead. 

There is distinctiveness in the persons of the 
Trinity. There is a fatherliness in the Father 
which is not found in the Son nor in the Spirit. 
There is a mediateness in the Son, a deputedness to 
the end of immanence in the Spirit, which are not 
in the Father. Without the Son, who by the nature 
of his person as the agent of creation, can relate 
himself to created things according to their need, 



Personality and the Trinity 109 

deity would be an incompletion. Of course, there 
must be unity in the Godhead, in the Trinity; but 
solitariness is not unity. A limbless rampic is not 
a better model of unity than a living, wide-spreading 
tree. The tree is none the less a unity because of its 
branches, for in reality they give meaning to its 
unity. The tree is one. The Trinity is also One. 
In fact, there is a sense, and that the very highest, 
in which deity cannot be said to be one, unless it is 
three. It cannot be said to be personal, unless it is 
tri-personal. The Three in One,* and the One in 
Three constitute the very highest unity of the 
Trinity. 

To place undue emphasis upon the distinctiveness 
of personality, and make it amount to separateness, 
is nothing short of being perverse. Normal dis- 
tinctiveness is not abnormal separateness. The 
latter is a result of sin. As yet the social unity of 
humanity is but a thing of shreds and patches, be- 
cause of iniquity. Ideal personality, normal in dis- 
tinctiveness and perfect in social unity, is far re- 
moved from what human personality is as yet. 
While the word " persons " is in some respects in- 
adequate to describe the Transcendent Three in the 
Trinity, still it must be used to designate them. It 
is vastly better than any other term at hand, even 
though it does carry with it the suggestion of cer- 
tain limitations in humanity not found in deity. 
When there is transferred into our picture of the 
Trinity the defective outlines of imperfect human 



no The Living Atonement 

personality, it is no wonder that such a presentation 
becomes, to some, a reason for the rejection of the 
doctrine of the Trinity. Only in God is ideal per- 
sonality to be found. As Prof. W. N. Clarke says : 

Probably the truth is that complete personality exists 
in God alone. He is the one perfect and typical person; 
and man as yet possesses personality in a rudimentary and 
imperfect way, as a growing gift which is gradually com- 
ing to perfection. We are compelled to define personality 
from ourselves; and yet we can thus obtain only a partial 
definition. God alone is fully personal. 3 

Is not Jesus Christ perfect in personality, fully 
personal? He is. Is he not God because of this? 
According to this reasoning of Doctor Clarke, we 
must either deny the perfection of the person of 
Christ, or admit his deity. Since God alone is fully 
personal, and since Professor Clarke further says: 
God is one person, 4 we are forced to conclude that 
Christ is an imperfect person. If my esteemed 
teacher had given due weight to his admission of a 
serious limitation in our knowledge of the nature 
of perfect personality, how could he categorically 
assert that " God is one person " ? Is this Unitarian 
statement securely established by arguing to it 
from our ignorance and imperfection, from what we 
do not know about perfect divine personality, and 
from what we do know about the imperfections of 
human personality? Doctor Clarke says again: 

8 " Outlines of Christian Theology," p. 68. 
* Ibid., p. 171. 



Personality and the Trinity in 

" Modern thought insists upon the separateness and 
self-included nature of personality — a conception 
unknown to antiquity." 5 So much the better 
for antiquity. As a matter of fact, the emphasis 
of modern sociology and psychology is upon 
the incompleteness of personality in a separate 
self. That elusive thing, " modern thought," is 
scapegoat for a good deal of theological sin. Is it 
not the thought of moderns — a few of them — and 
not " modern thought," which has blundered into 
naming defects as fundamentals, and then drawing 
final conclusions therefrom? Prof. Henry Church- 
hill King says : 

This at least is true. Nothing calls for more absolute 
and complete personality than love and social relations. 
To affirm social relations therefore in the Godhead is to 
assert absolute tritheism. 6 

The most perfect love and social relations are 
exactly what Jesus did affirm most emphatically, as 
ever existing between himself and the Father. If 
the perfection of Christ in moral character and per- 
sonality is accepted, the authority of his teaching in 
regard to the personal nature of God is established. 
That perfection, be it remembered, has never been 
assailed with facts. Who can convince him of sin, 
who, though tempted in all points like as we are, 
was without sin? 

5 Ibid., p. 152. 

6 " Reconstruction in Theology," p. 192. Cf. Prof. W. A. Brown, 
"Christian Theology in Outline," p. 152. 



H2 The Living Atonement 

It is well for us all to sit at Christ's feet and learn 
from him that his divinity did not at all involve his 
existing as a separate God. Since he knows most 
about personality and deity, it is well to stand by 
his teaching on the matter, even at the cost of being 
charged with tritheism. This tritheistic allegation is 
slim respect to the revelation of Jesus Christ. If 
one were to examine carefully in this connection 
the very many statements in the Gospel of John, 
setting forth the dependence and oneness in the re- 
lation between the Son and the Father, it would be 
made clear that Jesus guarded quite sufficiently 
against the accusation of making himself a God 
separate from the Father. 

Looking at a few of these utterances in the order 
in which they are reported in this evangel, we read : 

" The Son can do nothing of himself but what he seeth 
the Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these 
the Son doeth in like manner. For the Father loveth the 
Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth . . . that 
all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father." 7 
" The living Father sent me, and I live because of the 
Father." 8 " If ye knew me, ye would know my Father 
also." 9 " I do nothing of myself, but as the Father taught 
me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me ; 
he hath not left me alone; for I do always the things 
that are pleasing to him." 10 "Though ye believe not me, 
believe the works: that ye may know and understand that 
the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 11 "He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father : . . I am in the Father 

* 5 : 19, 20. 8 6 : 57. 9 8 : 19. 

10 8 : 28, 29. u 10 : 38. 



Personality and the Trinity 113 

and the Father in me. The words that I say unto you, 
I speak not from myself : but the Father abiding in me 
doeth his works." n " But when the Comforter is come, 
whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the 
Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he 
shall bear witness of me." 13 " And now, Father, glorify 
thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had 
with thee before the world was." 14 "That they may all 
be one, even as thou Father art in me, and I in thee. . . 
And the glory which thou hast given me I have given 
unto them ; that they may be one as we are one. . . for 
thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." 1S 

If the deity of Jesus were for the moment 
granted, would it mean that as such he must be 
less in unity with the Father than as a man? If 
so, deity is poorer in the best than is humanity. To 
unity with the Father, Christ's deity was not an 
embarrassment. 

III. In the Trinity may be seen the archetype of 
the moral and social unity of mankind. Where else 
could the original pattern of this unity be found? 
It must have its proto-type in the Maker of us all, 
or be counted an improvement upon the possibilities 
of deity. It could not be found there, if God were 
but solitary personality, for then a higher social and 
moral unity would be possible to creation than to 
the Creator. A tri-personal Deity has within the 
pattern of all that is good in the moral and social 

12 14 : 9, 10. 13 15 : 26. 

14 17 : 5. 16 17 : 21, 22, 24. 

H 



114 The Living Atonement 

realm. It may turn out that the spiritual and 
moral strength of God may be best portrayed in 
the quality of the unity of the persons of the Trinity. 
It looks as though it were that unity which sin 
finally attacked in the atonement and found in- 
vincible. 

Though denying the existence of social nature 
in the Deity, Dr. James Martineau gives an inter- 
esting definition of it as found in man. He calls it : 
" A mutual complementing of defective humanities." 
That he means defective in a good sense is shown 
by the context: 

The second affection is perhaps less conspicuously 
marked, but equally undeniable : I mean the social ; directed 
not only to our like as the former (the parental), but to 
our equals as respondent natures, holding up the mirror to 
our being, and at once taking us out of ourselves and send- 
ing us into ourselves. Perhaps if we were to press the 
inquiry to the last resort, we might find that between 
absolute equals, mere self -repetitions, this affection would 
hardly arise; that some differences and inequalities must 
still mingle with the general identity of type, to touch the 
secret springs from which society arises ; . . So in the 
wider circle, the real combining principle is a mutual com- 
plementing of defective humanities. Certainly between 
man and woman, between elder and child, the unlikeness is 
an important element in the attachment, delivering the 
heart from the staleness of self-repetition ; . . and I see 
no reason to doubt that a similar secret necessity of com- 
pleting some ellipsis of consciousness enters into the gen- 
eral texture of human ties. 16 

16 " Types of Ethical Theory," Vol. II, p. 146. 



Personality and the Trinity 115 

Doctor Martineau evidently did not see what an 
ellipsis there would be in the divine nature void of 
the social element, for he says elsewhere : 

No attribute could be named which we could assign to 
that lonely, unrelated God. We should speak of him only 
as we should of darkness, or of blank infinitude, by mere 
negation. That he has no parts, no limits, no passions. 

Thus the solitary unit filled eternity's fearful 
silence. How different is all this from the revelation 
which Jesus gave of God as all light and in whom 
there is no darkness at all. On the one hand, we 
have the idea of a solitary divine unit, the icicle of 
a frozen imagination ; on the other, we have the 
revelation of warmth of life, the mutual comple- 
menting in the social relations of the Father, Son, 
and Spirit. 

In the fundamentals of personality is the will. 
The strength of personality may be measured in 
the strength of will. As personality grows, the will 
increases in strength. Jesus was a strong person- 
ality. The strength of his will is revealed most 
significantly in his refusing to will anything con- 
trary to the will of his Father. The relation of the 
two wills adequately sets forth the relation of the 
two divine persons. Though he had a will of his 
own, the Son never willed apart from the will of 
his Father. Though he exists as a person, the Son 
has no personal existence apart from that of the 
Father. The same is true of the will and person of 
the Spirit. There is one triune will of deity. Here 



n6 The Living Atonement 

is the profound mystery of the Trinity — three wills, 
yet only one thing willed: three persons, yet but 
one divine Being. 

We must not expect to solve the mystery of the 
Trinity. A God without mystery is a God not even 
so great as man. Ah ! what a world of mystery is 
in humanity. There cannot be anything more 
known of the divine nature which does not add 
to this mystery. What a manifestation of God 
was made in Jesus Christ; but in revealing the 
Father he at the same time must bring into view 
the mystery of the Trinity. If it were possible to 
penetrate the mystery of the triune God, then we 
should doubtless find ourselves in the presence of yet 
greater mystery. The more a man knows the more 
he is weighed down by the sense of the comparative 
littleness of his knowledge, and of the unfathomable 
depths of mystery in the divine nature. We are not 
here on the shores of time to measure with the little 
cup of human comprehension the infinite ocean of 
divine existence. In conclusion, it may be said that 
in the co-personal being of the Trinity lie the same 
essential mystery and transcendency found in every 
phase of the divine nature. As the poet Young says : 
" A God alone can comprehend a God." Our Lord 
also says : " No one knoweth the Son, save the 
Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal 
him." 17 

" Matt. 1 1 : 27. 



VIII 
THE DEITY OF CHRIST 



Then as to truth being mighty, it is rarely considered 
that it can never come off victorious unless it takes the 
field. Who ever heard of apathetic, silent truth succeed- 
ing against active and eloquent error? Our Lord was not 
slow to answer his adversaries. The early Christians 
had their elaborate defenses; and I question whether any 
assault has been checked by allowing it to continue unop- 
posed. Truth is mighty; but it is not mighty when it 
skulks — seeks a hiding-place; and never has it prevailed, 
and never can prevail, until it bravely meets the enemy 
face to face. — George C. Lorimer, D. D. 

With all other deficiencies in our ordinary Christianity 
every earnest Christian thinker is continually thrown back 
to feel that its fundamental defect is an imperfect knowl- 
edge of its great head and center — Christ. Christ is Chris- 
tianity. He does not merely teach; he is the religion 
which we hold. To know it, we must know him. He 
is not merely the revealer, but the truth. Hence comes 
the high ambition to know more of the Saviour in order 
that our share of the salvation may be more complete. 
Who is he? What is there in him that fits him for his 
work? When did his work begin? The New Testament 
comes in answer to these questions to tell us all that we 
may know of Christ. —Phillips Brooks, D. D. 

As sound reaches us from external objects through the 
auditory, and vision through the optic nerve, so knowledge 
of spiritual being external to us, comes through our spir- 
itual susceptibilities, through intellect, conscience, feeling, 
and will. The only requirement in the case of sense or 
spiritual impressions is that we shall have capacities for 
and correspondences with objects external to ourselves. 
One chief difference in the two kinds of impressions is 
that those which are spiritual affect our entire nature — 
moral, religious, and intellectual — while sense impressions 
may affect the knowing faculty alone. 

— Pres. E. Y. Mullins, D. D. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

THE DEITY OF CHRIST 

To some the deity of Christ may seem an iceberg 
floating in the sea of theological thought, chilling 
the atmosphere far and near. To others it may seem 
a Mount of Transfiguration, where midst light and 
glory the Father acknowledges his Son and bids 
men hear him. We may account for these different 
experiences by the two contrary conceptions of deity 
which are current. Each conception naturally leads 
the person holding it to take religious attitude to 
Jesus Christ in conformity to its nature, thus be- 
getting an experience of the one kind or of the other. 
In the preceding chapter the Mount of Trans- 
figuration may look too much like a fort, inacces- 
sible to friends as well as to enemies. Nevertheless 
this doctrine will not defend itself; and is least of 
all doctrines adapted to apologetic form. The Lord 
prevails when his servants fight; but in apologetics 
we are too prone to battle as Peter did in Gethsem- 
ane. Let us not be severe with the militant disciple. 
He was better than the indifferent or idle spectator. 
Later, keener weapons replaced his blundering 
sword ; and the great preacher of Pentecost found it 
easier to gain men's ears than to cut them off. 

119 



120 The Living Atonement 

I. The Son of Man claimed to be deity. There 
is no doubt on that point. When charged with ma- 
king himself God, he did not deny it. Jesus knew 
full well that his claim to deity was either true, or 
it was the most blasphemous arrogance possible. 
He was all that he claimed to be; or he was the 
most unbridled impostor the world has ever seen. 
The old riddle — how he could deceive, or even be 
deceived in this matter, and yet live the unparalleled 
life — is still before us. Nothing in his life and 
moral character tends in the slightest degree to dis- 
credit his claim of divinity. He lived as a Son of 
God. So far as moral character, deeds, and life 
were concerned, God could not be better. " But 
one is good, even God " ; and Jesus Christ was 
perfectly good. 

As to the deity of Christ, the argument from ex- 
perience is the best defense, because it is the most 
helpful. When we sum up other kinds of proof, 
for and against his deity, we are face to face 
with the choice of accepting him to be all he claimed, 
or of accounting him a deceiver or, at the least, 
deceived. The experiential argument has no such 
dilemma; for no one who has tested his deity after 
this fashion, has been left in doubt as to its reality. 

An experiential inquiry into the divine nature of 
this great person, requires that the whole person- 
ality of the investigator be put into the investiga- 
tion. Not in the first instance nor at any time there- 
after, did the doctrine of Christ's deity arise from 



The Deity of Christ 121 

intellectual inquiry alone. An intellectual investi- 
gation alone cannot therefore be trusted to discover 
and verify its truth. Mere intellectual examination 
of such transcendent matters must prove insufficient 
and unsatisfactory. The greatest credentials of 
deity are not given to the mind alone. Exclusively 
intellectual investigation into Christ's deity must 
land almost invariably . in the Unitarian position. 
The revelation and proof of his deity may come to 
both mind and heart, but never to the mind when to 
the heart it is denied. Only the soul, as a whole, 
may discover or receive its own revelation. The real 
credentials of Christ's deity are not philosophic 
statements nor theological treatises. They are the 
logic of life, not of mere syllogisms. The only line in 
which a full and impartial investigation into Christ's 
divinity can proceed is along that of the experiential 
results from its full acceptance. The service, life, 
and spirit which belief in his deity begets, are the 
sufficient proofs of its reality. 

The reality of Christ's deity, back of the Christian 
life and originating it, is known fully by the life 
thus imparted. Unrestricted Christian experience 
alone gives adequate room for the wide range of 
the proof of Christ's divinity. A battleship cannot 
be sailed in a saucer. The full revelation of the 
mystery and transcendence of Christ's person can- 
not be crowded into the human mind. Wrapping a 
suit of clothes around a man's head does not test 
whether or not they fit his body; and applying to 



122 The Living Atonement 

the intellect alone the revelation of the Lord for the 
whole soul, must result in serious doubt of its 
truth. 

Experience is the final argument; but it is not the 
final argument unless it is the final experience. Ex- 
perience is final only when begotten by the final 
faith. Experience is not final when fractional; and 
faith is not final unless highest in type and fullest in 
scope. Personal faith in the Saviour is that which 
is highest in character; and the experience of shar- 
ing in the divine Saviourhood is that which is fullest 
in scope. Receiving the Christ has its own revela- 
tion to the soul ; giving him has a greater. Back of 
experience and faith is a spiritual disposition in 
kinship with them. The disposition to which the di- 
vine manifestation is possible, is that of intent and 
anxiety to do the will of God. Christ said : " If 
any man willeth to do his (God's) will, he shall 
know of the teaching, whether it is of God or 
whether I speak from myself." This teaching in 
summary, was : who he is, whence he comes, what 
his mission is, what man's need is, and how it may 
be met in him. He makes this challenge : Be in 
life what I am, by receiving from me the necessary 
help so to be, and you shall know me ; in your faith 
give me place as the Son of God, and I will vindicate 
my right to it; grant me your life as a channel 
through which I may run the water of life to this 
thirsty, dying world, and you shall be a proof of my 
deity. 



The Deity of Christ 123 

When men deny themselves the very experience 
that fully reveals who Jesus is, it is not surprising 
that they do not have this revelation. When men 
have not reached the transcendence of the Person of 
Christ in experience, it is no wonder that they should 
reject that transcendence as a doctrine. Experience, 
rather than discussion, is needed in proving the 
divinity of Christ. A man with an experience which 
compels him to attribute deity to the Lord, might 
argue for a lifetime with one not having such an 
experience, and fail to convince him. 

II. If some one should say that faith in Jesus 
Christ, as deity, begs the whole question, the fair 
reply may be made that nothing is assumed in faith 
that should not be, and nothing can be tested with- 
out it. Faith is the foundation and beginning of all 
investigation. We must believe that we exist, that 
our senses and processes of reasoning are trust- 
worthy, and that the thing examined exists. None 
of these can ever be proved. Especially in moral, 
spiritual, and personal matters, faith must lead the 
way in their investigation. To refuse to investigate 
by faith means that we have no faith in our powers 
of investigation. The only question is, how far faith 
is warranted in going. Certainly, it must go far 
enough to make possible the revelation which it 
seeks. The ability of a guide to lead out of the 
woods is not tested by the faith that follows him only 
for a step or two. No man can reveal honor or 



124 The Living Atonement 

honesty beyond the range and extent of the con- 
fidence which he has enjoyed. Christ's deity has 
been tested only in so far as it has been trusted. 
Faith in Jesus takes him at his word, and thus gives 
him a chance to prove that he is what he says he is 
— the Son of God. It will then be for him to meas- 
ure up to the place so given, or to fail. 

Faith alone can bring within the grasp of reason 
the facts of the nature of Christ's person. Faith 
is ever the engine which draws corn into the mill of 
experience. Reason is the millstone which does the 
grinding after faith has brought in the grain. There 
is absolutely no other power of transportation than 
that of faith. Its activity must, in any case, precede 
that of reason. It may furnish only chaff for the 
grinding; but faith must fill the hopper, for reason 
cannot grind with an empty hopper without causing 
heat, smoke, and its own ruin. The millstone can- 
not draw the grain, nor the railway engine do the 
grinding. Faith goes out after the harvest of facts 
concerning the deity of Christ, and brings them into 
the mill of experience. Reason then grinds this 
grain into the flour of truth that we may have the 
Bread of Life. To begin with doubt as to Christ's 
deity is to burn the bridges, tear up the track, and 
dynamite the engine. 

Reason does not more need faith than faith reason. 
Faith that is normal makes room for reason. The 
one must ever work in conjunction with the other 
in mutual helpfulness. As giving is not losing, but 



The Deity of Christ 125 

gaining the disposition to which God can unre- 
servedly give his best, so exercising faith is not blind- 
ing, but unsealing the eyes of reason that God may 
reveal to it unlimitedly of his best. To some of his 
disciples the resurrection of Christ had at the first 
no more standing than an idle tale; but later it be- 
came verified fact. The deity of Christ may have at 
first no more standing than discredited doctrine; 
but later it may become the most precious jewel 
placed by faith within the casket of reason. Reason 
may be more fleet-footed than faith and arrive first 
at the sepulcher, but faith is the first to enter. 
Faith makes the discovery of the fact possible; but 
reason immediately settles itself before the task of 
apprehending the meaning of the fact, and of squar- 
ing intellectual with experimental proportions. 

III. The difficulty about the person of Christ is 
that of securing a theological statement of it, com- 
mensurate with the proportions which he fills in 
normal Christian experience. Reason would have 
denied that such a person could ever be found on 
earth. He lived the spotless life among men. No 
other one on earth has exercised such vast powers 
of spiritual helpfulness and taken such undying hold 
upon human hearts the world over, as he, an obscure 
person in a remote province. Reason alone would 
not have expected that one within the narrow bounds 
of Palestine, living but three short years of ministry 
two thousand years ago, could exercise such un- 



126 The Living Atonement 

limited influence upon the life of the world to-day. 
All these, however, have come to pass; and reason 
must weigh well such tremendous facts in forming 
a personal estimate of the Christ. 

More important than all such facts, in the main 
external to the experience of the individual, are 
those within his experience as a member of the 
kingdom of God. Both the revelation and proof 
of Christ's deity are here progressive in character, 
for experience is itself progressive. 

The more important a doctrine, the wider must 
be the realm of fact supporting it and the broader 
its basis in experience. Those who were first as- 
sociated with the Lord as disciples did not reach 
their full estimate of him at once; it grew with 
experience. After the resurrection, with its exultant 
joy, and Pentecost, with its spiritual ecstasy, he who 
had earlier asked, " Whom say ye that I am? " now 
led them by his Spirit to shape in fuller proportions 
their estimate of his person, as they sought to save 
others and to share their joy with them. In the 
natural development of experience in the kingdom 
of the Lord, there comes thus an increasing reve- 
lation of the transcendent nature of Christ's person ; 
and the sense of proportion compels a corresponding 
doctrinal statement of his divinity. 

The Scriptures are a record of a progressive 
revelation of God ; but there is the progressive reve- 
lation of experience as to the Scriptures. The 
longer one lives by them, and the more he gives of 



The Deity of Christ 127 

light and of life to others through them, the stronger 
to him becomes the proof of their inspiration, and 
the more unique does the Bible appear. In the 
same way, if we keep company with the Lord long 
enough in his work of saving the world, we will 
come to the fuller revelation of his deity. In this 
matter, very much depends upon the place in life 
which Christ and the Bible are allowed to fill. The 
same process that brings the revelation of the divine 
in the one, will bring it in the other. It is worthy 
of note that the doctrines of the inspiration of the 
Scripture and of the deity of Christ are usually 
accepted or rejected together. 

Life is everywhere a continual withering or 
development of ability to see God. It depends upon 
how men are investing their lives as to what 
the word of God and the Son of God are to them. 
As there are no high privileges not balanced by 
equally high duties, so there are no great revela- 
tions not balanced by equally great cost in obtaining 
them. The opportunity of serving a revelation is 
also the opportunity of receiving one. The greater 
the opportunity missed, the greater the resultant 
atrophy. In any case we get exactly what we pay 
for at the store of experience. We never fail to get 
the revelation which belongs to the kind of life we 
live. 

God has ordained that the glory of the person of 
his Son shall be hidden from those who do not put 
the kingdom of God first in their interests. The 



128 The Living Atonement 

more heart we have in that which is most in the 
Saviour's heart, the better may we understand his 
heart — and him. The broader our contact with the 
outgoing life of the Son of God, the greater our 
range of vision in things divine. Those who keep 
company with the Lord in his work of saving the 
world, will not need to seek proofs of his deity ; 
they will have them without seeking. He who would 
know Christ by thrusting the fingers of investigating 
criticism into his sacrificial wounds, may learn of a 
more excellent way. Let him thrust his hands into 
the work to which the Saviour, in his final command, 
directed. The presence of the Lord in the soul, and 
the unique revelation of divinity which goes with it, 
are both given to those who work Christ's work of 
the world's redemption. 

The disposition which intuitively accords him the 
place of deity, is unfailingly created by contact with 
Christ in the divine movement of saving the lost. 
Beholding the resurrection of dead men through the 
power of the risen Christ, one instinctively exclaims, 
" My Lord and my God ! " Such confession is 
founded on better evidence than that which Thomas 
saw. Better than beholding the crucifixion marks on 
the risen Lord, is beholding the marks of the Christ- 
life in those once spiritually dead. Those who 
loudest deny the divinity of Christ, would be first 
in proclaiming it, did they let the spirit and service 
of Christian evangelism make its revelation to them. 
More powerful in argument than all apologetics, and 



The Deity of Christ 129 

more convincing than all Christologies, is the ex- 
perience of personally transmitting the Christ-life to 
others. 

IV. The experience which compels us to ascribe 
divinity as well as humanity to Jesus Christ, arises 
from the place he occupies in the kingdom of God. 
He who in rebirth enters the kingdom, and in sacri- 
fice surrenders himself to its extension, comes face 
to face with the proportions which Jesus there fills. 
He is head of the kingdom; he forgives sins; he 
sends the Holy Spirit ; he is the vital force, the mag- 
netic, personal center of this realm ; he carries on 
through the ages the work of saving the world ; in a 
word, he exercises prerogatives far beyond those of 
man, and not less than those of God. 

No man, however God-filled, could fulfil the 
promises of Christ. No mere man could do the 
work which he is doing, no matter how much God 
was with him or in him. Surely he must be God, 
for he bulks infinitely beyond what may be in- 
cluded in the category of man. The line of his ac- 
tivity far exceeds the bounds of human limitations. 
The power which he exercises far outreaches the 
utmost which man can wield. The functions of 
humanity cannot be stretched to include the pre- 
rogatives of deity. 

The sinless life has been lived. Words for 
which the heart of man has long hungered, have 
been spoken. A life so strong in goodness that it is 
1 



130 The Living Atonement 

able to lift all lives which lay hold on it into 
familiarity with God, has done, and is still doing, its 
superhuman work. Though long ago his life on 
earth was finished, he still manifests here an abiding 
presence; and is constantly transferring the saving 
power of his own life to human lives. Transforming 
these lives, doing what no resident forces or laws of 
this world can account for, still living with and 
within us, and bringing forth in human life the 
richest morality and spirituality by his indwelling — 
these are records of the work of divinity. Nothing 
but deity is adequate to explain it all. 

In the history of Christian experience the fact is un- 
mistakably clear that the closer lives have been held 
under the influence of Christ, the higher have been 
their attainments in ethical character and spiritual 
life, and the more abundant has been their service to 
God and to the world. Lives like Livingstone's and 
Lincoln's are attestations of their Master's divinity. 
In human experience deity is recognized by the 
character and scope of its work. The range and 
quality of interests which Christ awakens in men, 
clearly announce who he is; the richness of his life, 
the breadth of his love, and the vastness of his moral 
powers unmistakably manifest his divinity; the orbit 
of the Lord's activity proclaims his deity. 

The saving of men from sin requires not less than 
a divine agent. Deity and the salvation of the world 
stand over against each other as proportionate. They 
are mutual and commensurate in revelation. The 



The Deity of Christ 131 

tremendous scope of Christ's work of redemption is 
an exhibition in due proportion of his divinity. One 
never knows how hopelessly lost this world is, till 
he tries to save it; he never knows what a divine 
Saviour Jesus is, till by the Christ he is set at work 
saving this world. 

To be where even a glimpse of the Lord of life 
at work in the kingdom of God may be had, is to 
behold how far beyond man he is; but to be there, 
means that one has come to give help in this great 
work which Jesus has on hand. He who shares in 
the work of saving the world, shares unfailingly in 
the revelation accompanying the work. In propor- 
tion as a man yields himself to this great task, will 
the reality of the deity of Christ impress him. The 
life given as a lever to the Lord with which to lift 
the world into right relation to God, will recognize 
the hand using it to be that of divinity. 

Faith in and love for Jesus as the Son of God 
have never been disappointed; and they constitute 
the most searching test. The closer we come to him, 
the more we find to adore. It is the very richness 
of his helpfulness that makes so interesting the 
mystery of his person. He is all that we could ask 
for in God and humanity. He is perfect humanity 
in relation, and perfect God in revelation. The per- 
son of Christ combines the infinite down-reach of 
God and the infinite up-reach of man. In him is 
summed up the full scope of human possibility and 
the measureless self-giving of God. 



132 The Living Atonement 

Christ is as much greater than man as the power 
he wields is greater than man's. No mere man fits 
the throne of the Lord. We cannot but deify him 
for his work's sake. We must conclude that he is 
in proportion to what he does, and is, therefore, 
more than man. Since in saving man he has exer- 
cised the functions of deity, the doctrine of his per- 
son must be stated accordingly. Since he is God 
the Son in human experience, he must be God the 
Son in theology also. As Tennyson sings : 

And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 

More strong than all poetic thought; 

Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house or digs the grave, 
And those wild eyes that watch the waves 

In roarings round the coral reef. 



IX 

THE MEANING OF SIN 



The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to 
those who feel. -Walpole. 



Not if I had a hundred tongues, and a hundred mouths, 
and a voice of iron could I retail all the types of wicked- 
ness, and run over all the names of penal woe. 

— Virgil. 



No good or lovely thing exists in this world, without its 
correspondent darkness; and the universe presents itself 
continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning 
or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand 
and on the left. -R m kin. 



CHAPTER NINE 

THE MEANING OF SIN 

The meaning which any one finds in the atonement 
is determined almost wholly by the meaning which 
he finds in sin. The depth of our understanding of 
the one will ever correspond with the depth of our 
understanding of the other. The Godward meaning 
of both is, of course, the deepest. Iniquity means 
that God is not recognized, is not given his place, 
though the sinner may at first be unconscious of 
this meaning of his sin. It is astounding that Per- 
fect Holiness and Almighty Righteousness should 
be opposed and that Immeasurable Goodness and Il- 
limitable Love should have an enemy. In the history 
of ethical experience sin is, however, an unmistak- 
able fact. True, there are systems of thought that 
would blind the moral sense by their denial of the 
existence of iniquity. To such we cannot do better 
than quote the words of John: 

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and 
the truth is not in us. . . If we say that we have not 
sinned, we make him (God) a liar, and his word is not in 
us. 1 

The greater the blindness about the existence of 

1 i John i : 8, 10. 

135 



136 The Living Atonement 

sin and its nature, the swifter and more awful its 
ruin. Facing a group in the grocery in which he 
worked, a clerk said not long ago, " Sin has no real 
existence. What a man does, he cannot help doing." 
Within a few weeks after he absconded with his em- 
ployer's money, and brought disgrace and sorrow to 
home, church, and community. It is the old, old 
story over again. Sin does not disappear on denial 
of its existence, and its results do not change with 
men's refusal to accept the facts of its real character. 
While they go on quibbling about its existence, sin 
goes on putting love to God, human happiness and 
welfare out of existence. 

I. There is no greater curse in the shape of creed 
than that which denies the existence of sin. The- 
ology is never more inexcusably shallow than when 
it is superficial in its estimate of sin. Part of what it 
has done to a man may be judged by the view which 
he takes of iniquity. Where it has left him, may be 
told by what he thinks about it. The dressing up of 
sin in the dreamy colors of pantheistic philosophy, is 
itself a misleading of iniquity. Alas ! Sin can as 
insidiously warp the theologian as worst the drunk- 
ard. Its existence is not at all confined to coarse 
and brutal forms. It is all the more subtle and 
seductive the higher the sphere and nature in which 
it works. Scripture tells us that fools make a mock 
at sin. Surely the prince of fools is he who stands 
smiling at that which has destroyed his sanity. 



The Meaning of Sin 137 

It has been truly said that all our heresies start 
from a false estimate of the sinfulness of sin. Cer- 
tainly, one of the rotten-ripe fruits of iniquity is 
blindness to its existence. The soap-bubble theories 
of speculative theology are a poor exchange for the 
biblical estimate of sin. These child's-play bubbles 
are iridescent for the moment in the light of nov- 
elty; and then their hollowness breaks into their 
essential nothingness. A human demon a short 
time ago lured away a little child suffering from 
a broken arm, assaulted, and murdered her. If 
you were her father, gazing at the expression of 
horror upon the distorted face of the dead child, 
lying midst the tall weeds upon the river bank, and 
speculative philosophy with bland smile thereupon 
should announce to you that the outrage and murder 
of your child were but the mistaken quest of God, 
would you then take the fiend incarnate to your 
bosom and to your home in his search for God? 
You should do so, if this philosophy is true. 

Sin is too inveterate a mistake to be all mistake. 
It is a blunder too persistent and stubborn in the 
wrong to be accounted the quest of anything right. 
True, sin is a mistake ; but it never blunders into the 
quest of God? Does it ever seek God, it is as the 
assassin seeks the king. It is moral insanity to say 
that all wrong-doing is really the attempt to do right. 
When it is asserted that, as far as we can see, all sin 
is simply the faulty seeking of the divine, is it not 
clear that we do not see at all, and that we never 



138 The Living Atonement 

shall without having removed from our eyes the 
cause, namely, philosophic cataract? 

Whatever theories we may hold as to the origin 
of sin, it is here. " The real and vital question be- 
fore men is not how sin got here, but how to get 
rid of it." 2 

One way not to get rid of it, is to deny its existence ; 
another way is to present it as less dangerous than 
in fact it is. The stock objection to a realistic de- 
scription of sin is that such is not sin, but a personifi- 
cation of it, treated as a self in itself. While sin has 
no separate, metaphysical existence, it has moral and 
experiential existence. It does not exist outside of 
personality; but the same may be said of goodness 
and of every other moral element. Goodness is not 
falsified when personified. No more is evil. Sin is 
an ethical entity. As goodness is not a dead quality, 
but a living principle, so sin is not an abstraction, 
but a living power. Badness (one of the weakest 
descriptions of sin) is as definite as goodness. Sin 
is the vital principle of a degenerate spiritual life. 
As the late Prof. G. B. Stevens said : 

Hence sin is not merely error, or weakness, or natural 
imperfection; it is moral perversity, a false direction. It 
follows that sin cannot be merely negative — a mere absence 
of good. Sin is as positive as goodness. 3 

Iniquity is not mere slips in the climb of develop- 
ment. Badness is ; sin exists. It is definite in type, 

2 Rev. N. R. Wood, " The Witness of Sin," p. 19. 

3 " The Christian Doctrine of Salvation," p. 319^ 



The Meaning of Sin 139 

and clearly and unchangeably opposed to goodness. 
It is goodness in no degree. Ritschl well says : 
" Sin is not an original law of the human will ; for 
it is the striving, desiring, and acting against God." 4 
To accept on the one hand the monism which says 
that badness is but goodness in disguise, or on the 
other, the Persian dualism of two gods, one evil 
and the other good, would alike be fatal to all that 
is exalted in Christian thought and morals. There 
is, nevertheless, an essential dualism in all monism. 
It is the dualism of the essentially opposite. There 
is the dualism necessary to ethics and without which 
morality and spirituality would cease to have mean- 
ing. It is the dualism of the good and of the bad, 
of right and of wrong, of holiness and of sin, which 
every one assumes in discussing moral and spiritual 
concerns. 

Physicians are sometimes blamed for making their 
diagnosis in the anteroom instead of in the sick 
room. Certainly a good deal of anteroom-diagnosis 
of sin has occurred. Its friends say : " There is not 
much the matter," and after a hurried glance, 
philosophic calomel is handed out in treatment of 
this spiritual leprosy. It is a serious thing if the 
diagnosis of a dangerous physical disease be cursory 
and untrustworthy ; how much more so in the case of 
the diseased and dying soul? If diphtheria is mis- 
taken for the headache with which it begins, and 

* " Justification and Reconciliation," p. 329, (Eng. Tr., Macintosh 
and Macaulay). 



140 The Living Atonement 

Asiatic cholera accounted a germless imagination 
that one is sick, how can the prescriptions to fol- 
low be of any value whatever ? They will be worse 
than useless. Physical diseases do not lessen their 
virulence and contagion by denial of their reality. 
The sincerity of those who deny that such diseases 
exist is invariably belied by their legs when a case 
of smallpox is discovered in their midst. 

Sin is both a functional and an organic disease 
of the spiritual nature. There was an awakening 
of the medical world when the bacteriological na- 
ture of some diseases was discovered. So ought 
there to be a great awakening in the theological 
world to the biology of sin. For one thing it would 
help to banish the vapid nonsense about sin being 
purely negative, or merely immature good. It is no 
more immature good than tuberculosis is immature 
physical life. According to spiritual pathology, 
sin must be accounted a disease of the vitals 
of the soul. In moral biology sin is as definite in 
kind and as pronounced in type as the streptococci 
are in bacterial life. Its degenerate life, its feeding 
upon the moral vitals, its symptomatic fever, its 
effect in ravings, its deranging the divine faculties 
of the soul, and its creating passion for opposing 
God, all show it to be distinct as to species. Normal 
moral life and sin life are as distinct as health and 
disease, and are forever separate in type. 

In the case of physical disease, symptoms are often 
confused with the disease itself. The hectic flush, 



The Meaning of Sin 141 

the hollow cough, and the emaciation of form are 
pronounced pulmonary consumption. No ! These 
are the symptoms and results. You must behold the 
tubercular bacilli at work to see this form of con- 
sumption. As with physical disease, so with the 
spiritual. Back of the symptoms and manifestations 
there is that which must be understood and treated. 
Students of pathology are divided as to whether ab- 
normal conditions are responsible for the pres- 
ence of bacteria, or the bacteria are responsible for 
the presence of abnormal conditions. The ques- 
tion whether a perfectly healthy body is immune to 
all disease, may be left in care of the medical doc- 
tors; but it is now recognized by all genuine sci- 
entists that conditions alone can in no case produce 
life of any order. Abnormal spiritual conditions of 
themselves cannot produce sin-life. Sin did not 
have life imparted to it by circumstances. Conditions 
of a certain kind are essential to its propagation; 
but they must be distinguished sharply from the 
originating life itself. Hell did not create sin; sin 
created hell. Iniquity hollowed out the bottomless 
pit. Evil laid the foundations of the diabolic do- 
main. Badness constructed the infernal abode. Sin 
was the architect and builder of the place of eternal 
torment. 

While sin has an existence as the disease of the 
spiritual nature, its full effects cannot be so stated. 
It is not only virus, it is also venom — the virus of 
the fever of hell and the venom of the demon. It is 



142 The Living Atonement 

the mock metaphysical entity of sin that makes the 
study of its existence so tantalizing. Everywhere it 
is a mockery. In reality it is the mockery of ethical 
reality. Since the highest form of truth is person- 
ality, the truth of the existence of sin and the highest 
form of its existence, will be found in personality. 
There is character and personality which is the per- 
fect expression and exact embodiment of sin. " The 
man of sin" is the ripened fruit of sin. The pos- 
sibility of the perfect personality of goodness carries 
with it unavoidably the possibility of the perfect 
personality of sin. The unvarying aim of either 
goodness or sin is to personalize itself. We may be 
blamed for personifying sin ; but its constant strug- 
gle is to develop personality, the sole object of which 
is diametrically opposed to the purposes of God. 
The demon is sin in a perfectly representative char- 
acter. Satan is sin's perfect personification. 

II. What a force sin is, what a diabolic might! 
What power of enticement and enchantment, il- 
lusion and deception, seduction and destruction it 
has! What energy of conquest it shows! How it 
interpenetrates the innermost of the moral being of 
man ! Behold its ability to pervert, paralyze, enerv- 
ate, and wrest from right relation! What intel- 
ligent and purposeful power it shows in fructifica- 
tion, propagation, concentration, and organization ! 
No man can encompass in the sweep of his moral 
vision all the vast horizon of sin and the breadth of 



The Meaning of Sin 143 

its dominion. Think of the countless millions it has 
enthralled, of the numberless hosts held tightly 
within its octopus grasp, till their struggles are over ! 
Its vice is ever the vise of death. Its grip is re- 
lentless. What a vast amount of moral life it has 
taken to feed this monster ! What strength of deep- 
rooted existence it has ! What almost indestructible 
vitality ! What has it not done ? What can it not 
do? 

So long as man is drugged by it into insensibility, 
he little realizes its power. While he runs with un- 
slackened pace in its race-course of ruin, he is little 
aware of the force sweeping him on to the bottom- 
less abyss at its end. When awakened, he finds 
there is no turning back. It is when one tries to 
escape from the Niagara current of sin, sweeping 
him irresistibly down its rapids, over its brink, and 
into the whirlpool vortex below, that he awakens to 
the torrent energy which makes him the plaything 
of its marvelous might. 

Sin is the soul of a degenerate world of persistent 
and truceless enmity to God. Every life it inhabits, 
it molds and moves to express that enmity. There is 
a social structure of its own, based on rank of sub- 
serviency to its ends. It is a world-spirit, the or- 
ganific spirit of systematic piracy which preys upon 
the domain of God. Sin is the soul of that organ- 
ized, degenerate life. To say that sin is an organ- 
ized, degenerate spiritual life is true, but painfully 
inadequate. It misses the soul of the degeneration. 



144 The Living Atonement 

What is most important to account for, is the genius, 
the substance, and the source of this degenerating 
agency. 

It is most difficult to account for the social affinity, 
the organic unity, the spiritual solidarity of sin. It 
may be said there is no isolated, unrelated evil, any 
more than there is isolated, unrelated good. Let 
those who will, laugh at the thought of an integral 
homogeneity, a social solidarity in sin. When any 
one engages in a battle of moral reform, he finds 
the affinity of iniquity, the nature of evil to relate 
itself and its power to combine in organized aggres- 
siveness or defense, to be no laughing matter. The 
merest tyro in reform knows this much. These 
things cannot be fully explained, for we do not know 
everything about anything. This, however, may be 
pointed out: the social nature of those infested by 
sin may be used to form the organic basis, the 
social structure which sin manifests. Back of that, 
and beyond it, there is the essential affinity, the sin- 
spirit, the unity of sin-life, which baffles investiga- 
tion. There could be no unity of organization, if 
back of that there were not unity and homogeneity 
in the life and spirit which thus organizes itself in 
the moral nature and social institutions. 

As goodness in man is allied with goodness every- 
where, so sin in man is affinity and alliance with evil 
everywhere. The genius of it is ever the same. It is 
a changeless, psychic energy, a tremendous spiritual 
power. It manifests a high grade of intelligence to 



The Meaning of Sin 145 

reach its ends. It has remarkable ability to organize 
and mass its forces, to entrench itself and carry on 
its agelong strife. These are weighty facts from 
which proportionately weighty inferences should be 
drawn. Sin is the total aggregation of evil spiritual 
energy, bound together by its own inherent affinity, 
Herein is the alarming seriousness of sin in that it 
unavoidably involves alliance with all evil. 

III. Nowhere is the authority of Christ more 
needed than in the teaching concerning sin and its 
consequences. Nowhere is rejection of his authority 
more fatal than here. To say that he shared the mis- 
taken notions and the hollow superstitions of the 
time, is flatly to accuse him of incompetency and 
practically to renounce him where most we need 
him. It is a matter of the utmost concern whether 
Jesus' estimate of sin is fiction and fancy or true. 

Jesus taught that sin is the begetting of kinship 
with Satan, and that sinners do the will of the evil 
one. The late Prof. G. B. Stevens said : 

Sin is presented as alliance with Satan, a kinship of 
spirit with him. Beyond this general idea no explanation 
of the origin and development of sin is offered in the 
tradition of our Lord's words. 6 

If Jesus lived the best life on earth, he is the safest 
authority on the nature of sin. He who has perfect 
sight can best tell what blindness means and misses. 

6 " Theology of the New Testament," p. 197. 
K 



146 The Living Atonement 

His mind is clearest and his conclusions sanest, 
whose life is purest. 

The greatest light upon the character of sin comes 
from what it has manifested toward Christ himself. 
It is the abstract of this which Ritschl states: 

The only way in which an idea of the bad can be 
formed at all, is in comparison with the good. The 
more or less complete the latter, the deeper or shallower 
will be our conception of the worthlessness of sin. 6 

To quote again from Professor Stevens : 

He alone of all men perfectly knows what sin is, and 
adequately realizes its evil, because his alone is the per- 
fection in contrast with which sin acquires its meaning 
and receives its condemnation. 7 

It is, therefore, in the light of what God is, and 
what sin did with the Son of God, that the most 
faithful examination of its meaning may be made. 
The lime-light of the peerless life of Christ reveals 
most clearly the blackness of the character of in- 
iquity. Then there stands out in darkest outline the 
moral form of sin against the pure whiteness of the 
Christ-character. In his crucifixion there was flashed 
upon the sensitized plate of the Christ-soul, the pic- 
ture of sin at work in the darkness which it had 
created. In the unfading light of the Unconsumed 
Burning upon Calvary there was photographed for 

8 " Justification and Reconciliation,'' p. 348. 

7 " The Christian Doctrine of Salvation," p. 303. 



The Meaning of Sin 147 

the first time in full, the hideous features of iniquity. 
An exceedingly important fact in apprehending its 
meaning, and one worthy of the most utmost em- 
phasis, is that the sense of the seriousness of sin is 
quickened in proportion to the degree in which we 
are possessed by the Holy Spirit. It is a great part 
of the work of the Spirit of the Lord to convict men 
of sin by conveying to them God's feeling about it, 
even as his word conveys to them his mind on this 
matter. The greater the power of the Spirit, the 
more awful in the sight of God does sin seem to us. 
The clearer the impress of God's Spirit, the more 
hideous and inexcusable does sin appear. Even in 
places where ages of pagan darkness have blinded 
and withered the moral sense, the Holy Spirit makes 
his message as to the divine feeling about sin, fully 
understood. Rev. J. E. Chute, a missionary at 
Akidu, India, writing to one of our religious papers 
concerning the revival on his field in the autumn of 
1906, said : 

It has been a matter of common remark among all the 
missionaries of India that the people of this country never 
seem to have any depth of conviction of sin. I have often 
felt this in my work hitherto, and had often made this 
same remark. The reason for making that remark has 
now been taken away with such a vigor, as we hope there 
will never be cause for ever thinking so again. " I have 
never seen such conviction of sin in any part of the 
world," is now the remark made by those who have seen 
the special working of the Spirit in such times as we have 
had during the past weeks. The power of conviction in 



148 The Living Atonement 

a great many instances has been simply overwhelming. 
The anguish of soul passed through has been awful to wit- 
ness; and when peace began to dawn, one felt as if he 
had begun to emerge from the shadow of death and hell. 

Concerning the revival in Pyeng Yang, Korea, a 
year later, Rev. Lord W. Gascoyne-Cecil wrote to 
the London " Times," in part, as follows : 

With a rush a power from without seemed to take hold 
on the meeting. The Europeans described its manifesta- 
tions as terrifying. Nearly everybody present was seized 
with the most poignant sense of mental anguish; before 
each one his own sins seemed to be rising in condemnation 
of his life. Some were springing to their feet, pleading for 
an opportunity to relieve their consciences by making their 
abasement known ; others were silent, but rent with agony, 
clenching their fists and striking their heads against the 
ground in the struggle to resist the Power that would 
force them to confess their misdeeds. From eight in 
the evening till two in the morning did this scene go on ; 
and then the missionaries, horror-struck at some of the 
sins confessed, reduced to tears by sympathy with the 
mental agony of the Korean disciples whom they loved 
dearly, stopped the meeting. Some went home to sleep, 
but many of the Koreans spent the night awake; some 
in prayer, others in terrible spiritual conflict. . . Bishop 
Turner said that what most impressed him about this great 
turning to Christ, was that the Koreans as a nation were 
not emotional. 

When one knows what sin means to God, then, 
and only then, does he know what it is in actuality. 
If to-day all preachers and religious teachers saw 
eye to eye with God as to the character of iniquity, 



The Meaning of Sin 149 

with what thoughts of thunderbolt and sentences of 
lightning flame would they describe it. At the beau- 
tiful salmon fishing grounds of the Restigouche 
River, in New Brunswick, Canada, a person on the 
bank high over one of its pools can see the fish lurk- 
ing at the bottom, which cannot be observed at all by 
the fisherman at the water's edge. So the nearer we 
come to God's standpoint, and the greater the moral 
altitude from which our view is taken, the more 
clearly may we see all that lurks in sin. 

It is only the sane sense of the presence and 
character of God that can truly realize the meaning 
of sin. Bring God down from the towering moral 
heights pictured in the Scriptures, and sin rises pro- 
portionately out of the dark depths of its guilt. Re- 
duce the Deity to spiritual principle or to pantheistic 
impersonality, and sin at once becomes illusion, a 
mere moral figment. Let God reign in the white- 
capped altitudes of unimpeachable holiness, or rise 
before us in the moral and spiritual grandeur of 
his Son, and sin in its slime cowers in the darkest 
caverns of hell. Ah! It was not for naught that 
Infinite Love inexorably hated it, and in uncom- 
promising sacrifice sought to blot it out. The love 
of God means therefore the relentless hate of sin. 

IV. Sin is preeminently a wrong to God. It is the 
terrible treason that tries to wrest the throne from 
Perfect Goodness and Illimitable Love. It is one 
long, incessant attempt to dethrone the Deity. The 



150 The Living Atonement 

Apostle John well describes it as lawlessness, an- 
archy. 8 It turns the heart into a dark chamber of 
treacherous plotting against the government of God. 
It is the ceaseless attempt to undermine the dominion 
of the Divine. 

One sin is incipient war with God and all good, a 
league with the devil and all evil, a potential hell re- 
placing heaven. It is not merely assault upon the 
throne of God ; it is the blow struck full at the face 
of the Father. Sin is the unsheathed sword and 
the straight thrust at the heart of God. It is the 
crucifixion of the good, the slaying of the Son-of- 
God-nature, the murder of life divine. Sin never 
rests till it has crowned innocence with thorns, and 
made its spear-thrust into the heart of unsullied 
righteousness. All sin is alike the torture of di- 
vinity ; it is the heartbreak of deity. 

Sin wrongs God in man as surely as it does man 
in himself. More of God was needed in the making 
of a man than in the making of a world. Sin 
wrongs God most, because he is greatest; but it 
injures him most in his greatest world — that of 
mankind. There is no place where iniquity can 
so easily do God tremendous injury as in the realm 
of humanity. It has wronged the divine in every 
human relation and interest. 

In the plane of his divine relations lie the arteries 
of the life of man. Wounded in these his spiritual 
life quickly ebbs away. Sin maims the religious 

8 1 John 3 : 4. 



The Meaning of Sin 151 

faculties of the soul, cripples man's moral being, and 
paralyzes the powers by which he should serve his 
Maker. In separating mankind from God, sin im- 
measurably injures both. It robs man, not so much 
in the trash of purse as in the treasure of life. 
While it is mutiny against God as captain and owner 
of the ship of life, it is also piracy to those who sail 
its mighty sea. Pillaging his cabin furniture and 
cargo may bankrupt man for the voyage of life ; but 
taking away the life-rudder of his religion, stealing 
the anchor of his faith in God, and cutting away 
the moorings of his soul, his fellowship with the 
Father, sin turns him adrift on a wintry, storm- 
swept sea without hope or chance of aught, save 
shipwreck in the thick darkness of midnight on 
roaring reefs of unutterable woe and amid the chill, 
black waters of everlasting death. 

Sin wrongs God in blinding human eyes which 
were meant to look up into the face of the Father, 
upon the beauty of his character, and out over the 
glory and goodness of his works everywhere. It 
poisons the heart which he made to love him. It 
sows in the soil of humanity a distrust of Deity, 
and thereby perverts its strength into producing a 
harvest of unfitness to live for God. It renders man 
insensible to the indispensable, blind to his divine 
need. Poor, indeed, is he who is robbed of his God. 
Low is the life sunken below the plane of divine 
birthright ; and dark is the day without the sunlight 
of God's presence. 



152 The Living Atonement 

All chance of gain is lost in sin; for it destroys 
the very foundation of gain. There is no advance 
but in God ; and there is no gain but God is partner 
in it. Selfishness is a principle of losing, not of 
gaining. Nothing is ever really possessed in selfish- 
ness. Before its method would work, God must 
cease to be God. The world is a rescript of the 
divine nature. God does not live for his own sake ; 
and nothing which he made was intended to exist 
for its own sake. This is the cohesive principle that 
holds the universe together, and makes it worthy to 
be called a world. Sin is the disintegrating process 
that attacks this essential principle of all creation. 
Infesting man's nature it sets him alike against God 
and his world. It opposes the divine unselfishness 
by which the universe is served, and seeks to break 
the bands by which it is held together. 

Sin wrongs not only God and the universe, it 
wrongs as well the man who commits it. It robs 
him of right relation to everything. It takes from 
him the priceless capacity to know the Father. It 
builds the soul into a barricade against God; by it 
the soul is transformed into a God-vacuum. It is 
the displacement of God, the enthronement of a 
mockery. It enslaves the soul to the opposite of 
that for which it is structurally fitted. It per- 
verts the functions of both body and soul. Its en- 
trance results in loss of spiritual capacity, degener- 
ation of moral character, destruction of divinest 
powers, alienation of love to God and man, shrink- 



The Meaning of Sin 153 

age of being, and loss of self-control, of life, and 
of soul. Iniquity contracts the circle of existence; 
shrinks to the infinitesimal the scope of life. It is 
the leakage of life, and the inlet of death. It is the 
persistent and pestilential parasite that sucks the 
heart's blood ; it is procuress to death and hell. Sin 
is the sale of the soul to Satan, the curse of man, 
the cause of all his misery, and the very defeat of 
humanity. It makes man's the discordant voice in 
the song of praise to God which all the rest of cre- 
ation sings. By it man becomes the broken bone, 
wrenched out of joint with all the purposes of God. 

Sin's record of wrong to fellow-man has filled the 
history of the race. Reasonably seeking God in the 
lives of his fellows, and finding but bitterest disap- 
pointment, man looks upon them all as living argu- 
ments why he should forsake the Most High. The 
life of fellow-man is the roadway in which humanity 
must travel because of its social nature. Finding no 
footing there for his faith in God, man totters 
helplessly into the bottomless mire of godlessness. 

For long centuries sin has kept humanity busy 
undoing itself. It has made man the greatest curse 
of man. It has created deep-rooted enmity and 
blotted out brotherhood. It has developed hate and 
withered sympathy. The ship of life, which was 
intended as passenger to human personality and 
freighter to human needs, sin turns into a black, 
sullen warship, or a merciless pirate. The castle of 
humanity which should have been shelter, hospital, 



154 The Living Atonement 

and home for the weary and wounded on the 
journey of life, iniquity turns into frowning forts 
bristling with armaments and belching forth death 
to the swaying ranks and broken groups which 
come within range. 

Sin sets man developing all possible evil in his 
brother. Has it not made us adepts in the art of 
torturing our own kind? Has it not taught nations 
to laud the wolfish instincts, and led them to spend 
all the centuries in developing the art of murdering 
each other? Does it not blind statesmen to believe 
that the measure of national greatness is ability to 
fill the trenches with countless dead, and the homes 
of the land with widows and orphans in bitter loneli- 
ness? Damned war! How we laud and love it 
still ! It is not so much that we have brutalized the 
man with the hoe, as that we have deified the man 
with the sword. 

War has slain its thousands, but strong drink its 
tens of thousands. Alcohol does worse than gash 
and slash to death with sword and saber. Yet men 
legalize this engine of damnation and the saloon for 
its trade of filling hell. Drug shops of death are 
licensed in the hope of restricting the business of 
hell's undertakers. Because of the blindness of sin, 
men of brain hand out from legislative halls and city 
council chambers the swords that daily drip with the 
blood of innocent babes and helpless women. But 
for sin there would not be put upon the head of the 
greatest murderer in the world the helmet of State 



The Meaning of Sin 155 

protection. It is because of iniquity that in the 
name of Jesus upon the brow of this Judas is placed 
the golden crown of legal right. 

Business too, no less than war, is carried on by the 
sword in this world of sin. Scarce a need of man, 
that is not used to enslave him. Scarce a necessary 
of life, that some greedy corporation does not con- 
trol and exact for it what price it pleases. It is 
called business to extort from the purse, bleed the 
veins, or ruin the soul, according to the nature of 
the financial campaign against fellow-man. Sin 
takes bread from the hungry, clothing from the 
shivering, and home from the family. Human 
blood is turned into gasoline for the motor cars of 
the world's pleasures. The juggernaut of wealth 
crunches under its wheels all who chance to lie in 
its path. Sin flaunts its heartlessness in the very 
faces of those whom it despoils. Men find enjoy- 
ment in human misery, and misery in the redress 
of human wrong. Within the sound of the world's 
suffering men are using what could relieve it, to 
dehumanize their own natures, blast their own lives, 
curse their own children, and ruin their own souls. 

What indignity has not man received from his fel- 
low-man ? Sin has made man a fiend in his treatment 
of man. He has plucked off the hair, dug out the 
eyes, lopped off the ears, cut out the tongue, pulled 
limb from limb, hacked the quivering body in pieces, 
burned it alive, drunk its blood, feasted upon its 
flesh, and left birds and beasts to devour what little 



156 The Living Atonement 

remained after his brutality had glutted itself. Lust 
prostitutes the mother, the maker of the home, and 
even little children are sold to the life of shame. 
In the name of love fair lovers are shot dead, 
fathers slay their wives and children, and mothers 
their unborn babes. They who could have made this 
world a heaven below, have by sin made instead a 
deep, sobbing hell ; and man cannot keep his brother 
in the place of torment without staying there him- 
self. 

No book could contain all the story of sin's wrong 
in man's inhumanity to man. Suppose even one 
day's injuries could be summed up, what mind could 
grasp the proportions of the dread catalogue? As 
the sun sinks to-night in the west, what happiness 
and hopes of human hearts upon which it rose so 
fair, are broken and shattered forever! Before it 
rises to-morrow morning what beauty, purity, pos- 
sibility, and power will have vanished utterly! In 
the pale light of the dawn will lie the upturned face 
of the dead, the light of whose life was snuffed out 
by the hand of iniquity. " The dead tell no tales," 
say we ? Tell they not the most awful tales of the 
dark night of sin's wrong and the never-ending 
tragedies hidden within the folds of its darkness? 

If the bones of those who have died because of 
human injustice were piled together, what a heaven- 
towering monument to sin it would make. If 
all the tears which humanity has wept because of 
wrong from fellow-man, were gathered unto one 



The Meaning of Sin 157 

place, what a sea of sorrow it would be ! If all the 
human blood that man has spilt were gathered unto 
one place, what an ocean of gore would roll in 
crimson waves ! If all man's moans and groans and 
cries of fear and hate and terror could be accumu- 
lated into one, what a deafening, thunderous roar 
of human agony would rend the heavens ! 

The crush of selfish conquest, the crash of broken 
governments, the clash of nations, the roar of war 
between labor and capital, the cries of the robbed 
and of the starving, the hoarse laugh of fiendish 
lust, the shout of murderous mobs, the shrieks of 
the slaughtered, the huzza of the world's colosseum 
as men tear out each other's bowels for its sport, all 
mingle in an awful din that echoes up earth's hill- 
sides and beyond mountain peaks in the vast re- 
sounding dome of heaven and into the ears of God 
himself. 

This chapter has scarce begun to state the signifi- 
cance of sin. To interpret fully its meaning in 
human language is utterly impossible. No man 
could realize to the full the wrong of his own sin 
— and live. To know the Godward meaning of in- 
iquity as Christ did, we would die as certainly as 
he did. To feel toward the sin of the whole world 
what God feels to-day, we would be consumed 
with the flames of our own indignation; we would 
pass out under the power of the passion that broke 
the heart of the Son of God. 



THE MEANING OF ATONEMENT 



We cannot atone to others for the wrong we have done 
them, nor can we even atone to our own souls. A third 
party, an infinite being, must make atonement, as we can- 
not. It is only upon the ground that God himself has made 
provision for satisfying the claims of justice, that we 
are bidden to forgive others. 

—Pres. A. H. Strong, D. D., LL. D. 



It is from the fountain of his love that Christ's atone- 
ment came. The Son himself, who was free indeed, came 
to do the Father's will, " that the world may know that 
I love the Father; and as the Father gave me com- 
mandment, even so I do," he said as he arose and went 
thence. He has not done his work upon us until he has 
brought us to the Father's feet ; until he can say, " Of 
those that thou hast given me I have lost none/' . . 

But human analogies help us, and indeed the doctrine 
of the atonement without them would be a mere blank 
for our minds. So I seem to see how it is that the simple 
receive and understand the plainest preaching of the glori- 
ous truth of propitiation, and leap to it ; while those, whose 
minds are overlaid with speculation and what is called 
culture, find it difficult. Alas ! we often see theologians, 
even evangelical theologians, using infinite evasions and 
subtleties to disencumber themselves of the one weapon 
without which the evangelist can do nothing at all. 

— Sir William Robertson Nicoll, M. A., LL. D. 



CHAPTER TEN 

THE MEANING OF ATONEMENT 

There is a law that the greater God's gift the 
greater is its cost to us in the right use of it. Lan- 
guage is an example of this. It is a perplexing 
possession. To speak so as to be understood and to 
interpret correctly what has been said, are not easy 
tasks. To convey thought is harder than to think, 
because sharing thought is better than mere think- 
ing. Expression is more than utterance. 

Individuality must be taken into account in the 
matter of language, for seldom does the thought 
from the mold of one mind fit perfectly into the 
mold of another. There is also the difficulty of step 
and pace in thinking. Long strides, occasional leaps, 
and great speed of thought on the part of a writer, 
limit the number of persons who are able to follow 
him. Individuality in expressing thought has a 
counterpart difficulty of subjectivity in interpreting 
it. It is fatally easy for a reader to assume that 
anything which comes into his mind is in the book. 
Careful reading is hard work. The effort to de- 
termine exactly what the author said or meant to 
say, tests our ability and training. When a seminary 
class was told by their teacher that not more than 
L 161 



1 62 The Living Atonement 

one college graduate in ten could read, they all 
laughed. In less than ten minutes their laughter 
was turned into chagrin. 

Language itself is an imperfect means of ex- 
pression. " Words half reveal and half conceal " 
their import. Their flexibility in meaning, their 
varied shades of significance according to order and 
position, together with the other difficulties named, 
make perfect expression and understanding the ex- 
ception, rather than the rule. In profound sub- 
jects like that of the atonement, imperfect expres- 
sion and interpretation abound. Perhaps this ex- 
plains in part the endless discussion upon this theme. 
Exceptional care should therefore be taken in de- 
fining the terms used. A foot of definition may 
save leagues of misapprehension. In defining the 
term atonement, there will be marked out the course 
which the ship of expression is about to take in the 
great sea of thought on this subject. 

I. First of all, it may be said, there is no defini- 
tion of the term atonement which could be given 
that would be acceptable to all. Every school of 
thought would be alert to entrench itself in the 
definition given; or, failing that, would at once 
object to the definition. At the outset the most that 
can be expected, is a tentative definition, resting 
upon the substratum of the general usage of the 
term. Each word has by common consent a definite 
content, for terms are designations. Words are not 



The Meaning of Atonement 163 

adapted to appropriation by individuals. They 
should not have private value attributed to them, 
and forthwith be thrust into currency again at this 
private valuation. 

Final definition is an extremely difficult, if not 
impossible, task. We make our little fence of words 
around an object, and then imagine that we have 
defined it; yet, when careful examination is made, 
lo ! more of the thing thus defined may be outside of 
our enclosure than within. Even the portion cor- 
ralled is enclosed in but one way; it is not en- 
sphered. How far it dips down or reaches up, the 
definition does not say. Truths thus penned up 
have a strange fashion of dropping out of sight 
into the earth or of disappearing into the air. 

The attempt to define them fails to reach the in- 
nermost of some of even the commonest things. 
Music is an example of this. One must despair of 
ever defining the warbling harmony of feathered 
songsters, " Sweeter than the instrument of man 
e'er caught." No earthly language may define the 
melody of salvation's song which broke the starlit 
silence on the Judean hills, when the choir door of 
heaven swung open, and angelic notes were wafted 
down in the rapturous chorus, " Unto you is born, in 
the city of David, a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord." 
It takes a whole Bible to explain the atonement. 
No one can encompass in a sentence of definition 
that which thus took God many ages to reveal. 
The full meaning of the atonement in its innermost 



164 The Living Atonement 

and utmost exceeds the compass of the mind of 
man; it is broader and deeper than the measure of 
mere intellectual statement. While the atonement 
thus transcends definition in human language, the 
term designating it does not. It would not be a 
term at all if it did. 

In tentatively defining that which in its nature is 
transcendent, there is grave danger of an emascu- 
lation. The term designating such may be defined 
as to its fingertips only, and not according to its 
heart and brain. For example, it is said that the 
atonement is that which removes an objection in the 
mind of God to the pardon of sinners. This may be 
true ; but with the term so defined, discussion of the 
doctrine of the atonement would be so restricted 
as to render it well-nigh worthless. It is not worth 
while discussing the price and plumage of the bird 
if the cage is empty. Definition must be more than 
cage; it must be content. One cannot define bird 
music by shaking an empty canary cage; nor can 
one define the term atonement by rattling the dry 
bones of the theological systems of the past. 

II. In selecting a working definition of the term 
atonement, two things must be kept in mind — 
the single point of view, and the natural sphere to 
which the term belongs. A definition, including 
several points of view, must prove a barbwire en- 
tanglement in the line of our advance. Pudding- 
stone does not represent as high a process as does 



The Meaning of Atonement 165 

quartz crystal. Conglomerate definitions have little 
prismatic power for the rays of truth. Seldom may 
a satisfactory working definition be found among 
those of the dictionaries. This is because of their 
tendency to over-inclusiveness. An example of 
such may be taken from a valuable work of to-day. 
It says : 

The atonement is the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, in gracious fulfilment of the loving pur- 
pose of his Father, whereby through the sacrifice of him- 
self upon the cross once for all, on behalf of, and instead 
of sinful men, satisfaction was made for the sins of the 
world and communion between God and man restored. 1 

The single point of view must be a commanding 
one. If it is too low in location, a large part of the 
horizon of the subject will be invisible therefrom. 
The etymologist from his deep dug pit calls out, 
" Down here is the single point of view ; here is 
your working definition. Atonement is at-one-ment ; 
it is reconciliation." How r ever, DTsraeli and many 
others have warned us that the etymologist is not to 
be implicitly relied upon. His dissection of the term 
may go no deeper than its epidermis. The theo- 
logian who goes but " skin-deep " in the meaning 
of sin, is sure to stop with an etymological definition 
of the term atonement. 

It is necessary to know the horizon of a term, as 
revealed in the general usage of it, in order to be in 
a position to estimate the real value of a definition 

1 " Dictionary of Christ and Gospels," art. " Atonement." 



1 66 The Living Atonement 

of it from the point of view of its derivation. For 
example, the term " sanctified " means, according to 
its etymology, " made holy." When we find that in 
Scripture, God and Christ and the Bible itself are 
said to be sanctified, it is plain that much of the 
horizon of this term would be totally obscured by 
its definition from the point of view of derivation. 

Almost everything in the matter of its definition 
turns on the decision, as to what is the natural 
sphere to which the term atonement belongs. If it 
is held to be the social, then reconciliation may be 
accepted as its full meaning. Testing this by 
sweeping the horizon of general usage, we find that 
persons are never said to be atoned for when they 
are reconciled. A man is reconciled to, but never 
atoned to, his brother. To reconcile does not al- 
ways mean to atone, -and to atone does not always 
mean to reconcile. A man smuggles goods into a 
country. He later repents of this and makes atone- 
ment. This does not mean simply that he and the 
State are reconciled. It means that he pays the 
duty with interest. It means that he makes repar- 
ation, that he makes amends for what was wrong in 
act. It is true that reconciliation may be included 
in an atonement as the social part of its effect ; but 
it is a juggling of terms to make atonement and at- 
one-ment mean always the same thing; and it is 
confusing to describe its effect as its cause. 

Atonement is fundamentally an ethical term. It 
has to do with the social sphere, because the social 



The Meaning of Atonement 167 

is inseparably related to the ethical realm. The 
moral point of view gives us the full sweep of the 
horizon of this term. A study of the atonement 
from the point of view of experience and person- 
ality, calls for a definition of the term from the 
point of view of moral experience. 

Atonement is that which rights a 'moral wrong. 
Unless first there exists a moral wrong, there is no 
need of, and no room for, an atonement. As to the 
wrong, more than its righting cannot be done. Right 
cannot be improved upon. Atonement is the ethical 
constituent by which the wrong done is undone. 
As a term it designates that which is central in the 
repair-principle of the moral world. In essence 
atonement is a matter of making right. The sub- 
stratum of atonement is righteousness. This is in 
abstract its qualitative essence. 

The dynamic essence of the atonement is love; 
but love is primarily social as well as ethical. It is 
self-impartation and self-propagation. It varies in 
its moral content. What love is in ethical status, 
depends upon the ethical status of the self which 
thus asserts and begets itself. Love alone is, there- 
fore, not enough to constitute atonement. Atone- 
ment is atonement when love moves in it, and also 
when righteousness has its way. All love is not 
atonement; but the greatest love is that which 
makes atonement. 

The dynamic of the ethical is never found except 
in the social. What moral wrong could be truly 



1 68 The Living Atonement 

made right without love, when all such wrong arises 
from lack of love? Nevertheless, it is better in de- 
fining atonement to balance the ethical term 
" wrong " by the ethical term " right." We could 
say that atonement is the blotting out of estrange- 
ment by reconciliation, but even though we have 
then balanced a social term by a social, the range 
of such a wrong usually goes far beyond that of 
mere personal estrangement. 

The ethical point of view does not prevent, but 
rather gives content to statements of the meaning 
of the atonement in other realms. In the social, 
atoning is righting an estrangement, by means of a 
reconciliation; in the spiritual, it is making repar- 
ation for the dissatisfaction of holiness; and in the 
personal, the inclusive realm of all, atonement is the 
living ethic of personality righting by its existence 
that which is a wrong in its very existence as well as 
in its deeds. 

In the realm of religion, atonement is that 
which rights a spiritual wrong. Here we have the 
term defined not only intensively but extensively. 
In a religious sense atonement is so preg- 
nant in meaning that it needs to be defined, not 
only as to its qualitative and dynamic essence, but 
also as to its extent or range. We cannot convey 
the idea of extent by an expression of essence. In 
definition the qualitative and extensive may ac- 
company and supplement each other. For example, 
a social wrong is not the less an ethical one ; but in 



The Meaning of Atonement 169 

so naming it, the location of it is given and the 
relations in which it moves are designated. The 
social wrong is ethical in quality and social in range. 
The spiritual wrong is ethical in quality and spirit- 
ual in range. It moves and has its being in the 
spiritual relations. 

The spiritual includes God. It is true that any 
wrong, no matter how small, affects him; but the 
term designating it may not call attention to this fact. 
The spiritual term does, and thus helps to convey the 
religious meaning of atonement. A wrong to God 
is more than a wrong to his ethical nature ; and the 
wrong may be committed by that in man which is 
not termed as his ethical nature. In the spiritual 
realm, man wrongs with his entire nature; and in 
wronging God he wrongs his entire being and the 
whole spiritual universe ; but a wrong to God's love, 
to any other part of his nature, or to his nature as 
a whole, is still an ethical matter. It is the sub- 
jective in activity or the objective of the wrong, and 
not the essential quality of the outgoing act that may 
be other than ethical. Wrong is never anything 
else than wrong; but the seriousness of its meaning 
may be conveyed by taking into account the nature 
and importance of the realm in which it takes place. 
The spiritual wrong is the greatest possible. A 
wrong cannot lie deeper than the ethical and reach 
farther than the spiritual. Atonement for a spiritual 
wrong must take into account God and the whole 
spiritual universe. 



170 The Living Atonement 

III. Truth in its original, final, and most compre- 
hensive form is personal. The terms of abstract eth- 
ical quality and social force cannot fully express the 
meaning of the atonement. The concrete act, life, 
and person of him who exists as atonement, together 
express its ethical substance and its causal essence. 
In a normal person the social, ethical, and spiritual 
exist together in natural adjustment. The ethical 
substance of personality is a living thing. Undue 
emphasis upon the abstract and partial truth of the 
lower spheres of truth always leads to unbalanced 
statements of the atonement. 

Interesting questions may be asked at this stage. 
First, what is the wrong to be righted in the Chris- 
tian atonement? It is sin. Iniquity is a wrong in 
every direction, wronging the Infinite most deeply, 
but wronging even the finite infinitely. Some 
phases of its wrongs are the destruction of moral 
character and spiritual life, the estrangement of man 
from man, and from his Maker, and the disruption of 
the ethical fabric of God. Back of all such effects 
of sin is the parent wrong of its existence. The 
greatest thing about God is his existence; so with 
sin. Great is the wrong that sin does; but greater 
far is the wrong that it is. This is the primary 
wrong which is made manifest in sin's involved 
power of self-propagation. It has been said that sin 
is such an offense to him that God cannot pass over 
it in forgiveness without atonement. This is true; 
but what could be so great offense as to continue 



The Meaning of Atonement 171 

multiplying the offense? Surely, it is the existence 
which ever multiplies itself and thereby increases 
its offense, that, first of all, God cannot overlook. Is 
not sin the worst penalty of sin? Is not the worst 
thing about sin that it leads to more sin? Surely 
sin's existence involving constant reproductions of 
itself, is the offense of all offenses. Sin's greatest 
Godward wrong is its existence. This heart of the 
wrong of sin, the heart of the atonement 'must cover. 
iVtonement means an ethical covering; and one ex- 
istence can in this way be covered only by another. 
Unless we can agree that the greatest wrong of sin 
is its very existence, a fundamental matter will be 
in dispute. 

It is not here affirmed that the wrong of sin's 
existence and reproduction is its only wrong. There 
is a wrong that sin is, and the wrong that it does. 
No hard and fast separation of the two can be 
made; they go together as the mad dog and the 
bite. Atonement must also cover the injury that 
sin has done. Not only should the mad dog be 
killed and the spread of rabies stopped, but also the 
bitten child should be saved from death. Only as 
the latter is done, is the spread of the dread mania 
and disease really stopped. Atonement making 
right for the wrong of sin's existence involves the 
necessity of also making right the wrong that sin 
does. 

Is all that is done in righting the wrong of sin 
to be classed as atonement? In one sense it may. 



172 The Living Atonement 

Atonement may appear in partial and lower forms; 
but in the Christian sense, only the higher and fuller 
forms are usually termed atonement. The Bible 
helps to right the wrong of sin; but it is not spoken 
of as an atonement. In the best and fullest sense, 
only the self-sacrifice of the divine is atonement, for 
only this is broad enough to cover the vast expanse 
of sin's moral wrong. 

How is the wrong of sin righted, and by whom? 
Such an inquiry searches the profundities of the 
atonement to their innermost. The wrong of an exist- 
ence and its propagation could not be made right 
by a mere act, even of God himself. That which is 
a wrong in its very existence, may be atoned for 
only by that which is a similar existence. The 
wrong of an existence of inveterate murdering is 
made right only by that which exists to blot it out 
in death, and to give life in place of the life lost. 
As to the evil of sin's deeds, atonement is made 
therefor by that which is the opposite to it in 
ethical principle, activity, and life — that is the di- 
vine. The atonement is the instatement of the life 
of God by sacrifice in the death of the Redeemer. 
Nothing but the personal life of God is rich enough 
in goodness to make good for human iniquity and 
great enough in righteousness to right the wrongs 
of sin in existence, propagation, and works. So 
far as atonement can be made by an act, the death 
of Jesus Christ is such, inasmuch as it was brought 
about by his identification with sin; so that when 



The Meaning of Atonement 173 

he died, sin died both actually and potentially. The 
death of Christ was atonement in that the person of 
Christ was thereby instituted as atonement and his 
life instated into the work of destroying sin, right- 
ing its wrongs, and answering in satisfaction be- 
fore God for those who accept him. The meaning 
of death must be sought in the meaning of life. If 
there were no life, there could be no death. If there 
were no living atonement in the person of Christ, 
there could be no atonement in his death. 

It is often said that sin and atonement are but 
abstractions which theologians make. Would to 
God that sin were but an abstraction ! A realistic 
treatment of sin and of atonement must state their 
realities in terms of experience and personality. If 
sin destroys, it is in moral experience. There too 
must it be killed. The figure of the slaying of sin 
expresses the reality of its destruction. So atone- 
ment in experience will be atonement in effectiveness 
and actuality. Exclusively human experience is, of 
course, not meant. As we do not know the mean- 
ing of love, whether human or divine, except as it 
is interpreted to us by our own loving, so our under- 
standing of the atonement must proceed from what 
we know of it in our experience of the atonement. 
While we cannot hope to state in full even what 
experience has revealed, yet expressing it in the 
terms of personality we may be understood by per- 
sons. Love has its own language growing out of 
its experience. Christ is our language of love and 



174 The Living Atonement 

of atonement. He is our atonement. We have 
known him. 

Immortal love, forever full, 

Forever flowing free, 
Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never-ebbing sea! 

Our outward lips confess thy name 

All other names above; 
Love only knoweth whence it came, 

And comprehendeth love. 

— Whittier. 



XI 

CHRIST OUR ATONEMENT 



It is Christ then who, in the fullest sense, is our atone- 
ment, and our atonement is real in proportion to the 
reality of Christ in us. Our atonement is no merely past 
transaction; it is a perpetual presence; a present possi- 
bility of the life and of the self, the consummation of 
which transcends thought and desire. It is a "power that 
worketh in us." And the power is the power through the 
Spirit, in Jesus Christ, of God. " Now unto him that is 
able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask 
or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 
unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus 
unto all generations forever and ever. Amen." 

— Canon R. C. Moberly, D. D, 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

CHRIST OUR ATONEMENT 

Through much of the story of Christ's ministry 
there runs a note of unfulfilled expectation as to his 
own nation. " He came unto his own, and his own 
received him not." This disappointed hope has deep 
theological significance. We must not assume that his 
expectation was grounded on ignorance of " what 
was in man," for " he needed not that any one 
should bear witness concerning man." Nevertheless 
he could increase in knowledge and did learn by 
experience. He did not live mechanically according 
to a programme of foreknowledge. He hoped for 
the best from his own people. There was room for 
expectation in his experience, as in ours. 

Man, having refused the Christ his place in Mes- 
siahship, the Father gave him the larger place as 
atonement. He entertained the Messianic hope in 
spite of the fact, that he knew from the first, he 
must die at the hands of his own nation. Did 
not this hope of becoming a Messianic atonement 
mean that he saw the possibility of becoming the 
atonement without passing through death? Could 
not he, who said before he rose from the dead, 
" I am the resurrection," have also said before he 
m 177 



178 The Living Atonement 

suffered death, " I am the atonement " ? Did it not 
mean that he knew himself to be the substance of 
the atonement, and that he looked upon death as the 
rejected, or life as the accepted, Messiah to be but 
modes in which this substance took form according 
to the need and circumstances? 

When sin in its relentless murderousness would 
not let him live his life of love and sacrifice, Christ 
could become atonement for it only by passing 
through the death it would inflict. It compelled him 
to enter an atoning existence by means of death, 
rather than by means of a Messianic life. Had sin 
been of such a character that it would have per- 
mitted him to live, he could have been instated as 
atonement for it by his life ; but this is merely say- 
ing that if sin were other in nature than it is, the 
Lord need not have died. There may seem to be a 
contradiction in some of the foregoing statements, 
but this arises out of the same mystery which makes 
a contradiction appear in connection with the 
prayer of Gethsemane : " Father, if thou be willing, 
remove this cup from me ; nevertheless not my will, 
but thine be done." 

I. God has always been at work righting wrongs 
and making atonement in a measure, according to 
his means; but in his atonement by Jesus Christ 
the wrong of sin was met by the fullest form 
and highest substance. There were the lower forms 
of atonement in the sacrifices of things and 



Christ Our Atonement 179 

the acts of persons; but never before had a divine 
person become an atonement. In his death Jesus 
became the Living Atonement. Then was the su- 
preme moment of eternity and the perfection, fulfil- 
ment, and embodiment of all atonement. In this 
personal atonement all other forms found meaning 
and value. 

Just here we may note the teaching of Scripture 
as to the personal nature of the atonement. Men 
often speak of the satisfaction to God in the death 
of Christ ; and quote the passage : " He is the propi- 
tiation for our sins," saying, " That is metonomy — 
the person named for his death." But the New 
Testament nowhere asserts that the death of Christ 
propitiated God the Father. Every passage re- 
ferring to the propitiation of atonement says that 
Christ himself is the propitiation. The verb to 
propitiate occurs in the New Testament in one in- 
stance as follows : " That he might become a merci- 
ful and faithful high priest in the things pertaining 
to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the 
people." * 

The writer of this epistle then goes on to show 
that this " great high priest " " offered himself 
without blemish unto God." 2 Paul speaks of him : 
" Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem 
us from all iniquity." 3 Again he says : " The re- 
demption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set 

1 Heb. 2 : 17. 2 Heb. 9 : 14. 

8 Titus 2 : 14. 



i8o The Living Atonement 

forth to be propitiatory." 4 In the opening sentences 
of Galatians occur these words : " Our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who gave himself for our sins " ; 5 and a 
little later it is added : " The Son of God, who loved 
me and gave himself up for me." 6 In the Epistle to 
Titus, Paul speaks also of : " Our Saviour Jesus 
Christ who gave himself for us that he might re- 
deem us from all iniquity." 7 Speaking of the 
love-source of this satisfaction and atonement in a 
person, John also, says : " He loved us and sent his 
Son to be the propitiation of our sins." 8 

Said we not well that the word of God is always 
in advance of us ! Must we not come to its level 
where the death of Christ is not made of more im- 
portance than the Christ himself. Must not the 
worth of his death be found in him, rather than his 
worth be found in it? Was it not that he gave satis- 
faction to the Father in his death, rather than that 
death itself gave satisfaction in him to the Father? 
Is not the personal point of view a deliverance from 
the pagan interpretations of the nature of the atone- 
ment and the means of the divine satisfaction in it? 

II. The substance of the atonement is Christ ; and 
hence, his death has an essential place as the means 
by which he became the atonement. His risen life 
has also an essential place in the mediation of atone- 
ment. He was the concrete, personal, righteous- 

4 Rom. 3 : 24, 25. 5 Gal. 1 : 4. 6 Gal. 2 : 20. 

7 Tilus 2 : 14. s i John 4 : 10. 



Christ Our Atonement 181 

ness who died unto the death of sin and now lives 
unto the life of God in man. Some have preferred 
to state the substance of the atonement in the terms 
of abstract love, grace, righteousness, or holiness. 
The person of Christ includes and embodies all 
these. Since the term atonement is fundamentally 
ethical, we do well to state its substance as the 
original ethic of a divine personality. The substance 
of the atonement may be partially described in the 
language of the lower realms of truth; yet it can- 
not be adequately expressed except in the person of 
the Living Atonement. 

The deepest word in the realm of religion is life ; 
in the social realm is love; in the ethical realm is 
right; and in the realm of life itself is person. Truth 
in abstract is a reservoir with many faucets, and 
these may be arranged by different minds in differ- 
ent orders, one above the other ; but the same truth 
flows through them all. To the one to whom the 
social is most important, the atonement will seem to 
find its ultimate necessity in the love of God; to 
the one to whom the ethical is the greatest, in the 
righteousness of God; to the one to whom the 
spiritual is greatest, in the holiness of God. Per- 
sonal truth is the deepmost of the deep, and without 
which all the other forms are reduced to empty 
abstractions. 

III. Mechanical creeds and magical salvation go 
together. They will go together to oblivion. They 



1 82 The Living Atonement 

are on the road there now. They cannot go too fast. 
A mechanical interpretation of the atonement says 
that it was finished on the cross. Of course, every- 
thing depends upon the sense in which it is said to 
be finished. It is true it was finished on Calvary, 
but instrumentally only. It is anything but finished 
without being received by those for whom it was 
made; and it is anything but complete apart from 
Christ in whom it resides and consists, and who is 
its power and substance. It is unfortunate that his 
atonement has often been presented in a way that 
made it the foe of Christ himself. Some successors 
of Paul, in profession, if not in understanding, in- 
stead of preaching " Christ and him crucified," have 
too often preached " The crucifixion, and that of 
Christ." The doctrine of a finished atonement loses 
its moral content and saving power when presented 
in such a way that it dispenses with the living Re- 
deemer, for its personal mediation is really the con- 
summation of the atonement. 

There could be no atonement without a mediator 
of it; and there could be no mediator without an 
atonement which he mediated. A theory of the 
atonement is defective in proportion as it makes 
possible the separation of the atonement from him 
who made it, and from those for whom it zvas 'made. 
A personal theory of the atonement guards these 
points, prevents such misconceptions, and shows the 
relation of the atonement to human experience. It 
also sets forth the Christ in his resurrection as 



Christ Our Atonement 183 

necessary to the atonement as the Christ in his 
death. In him who is the atonement is stored up all 
its ethical merit and spiritual power. The atonement 
is available in the risen Christ and effective in hu- 
man experience. It is Christ who imparts all, its 
benefits. In that sense at least he is the living 

ATONEMENT. 

According to the law that any one is greater than 
his words or acts, the Christ is greater than his 
death. Atonement in an act is less than atonement 
in a person. The death of Christ was atonement, 
in that it made Christ the atonement. Jesus made 
atonement by the cross, because the cross made 
atonement in him. It was not so much that Jesus 
made atonement by his death, as that his death 
made him the atonement. We may rob either the 
cross of its Christ, or the Christ of his cross. The 
one is as bad as the other. As long as the cross 
remains the symbol of personal atonement in Christ, 
may no word be written to divert its esteem, deflect 
its power, lessen its merit, or dim the luster of its 
glory. 

Lord, grudging thee the bitter bliss of all thy woe, 

Men rob thee of thy cross, 

That landing-place for sin-wrecked souls, 

That place where God put forth alone with sin, 

And plunged it in the depths of his own blood. 



XII 
THE NECESSITY OF ATONEMENT 



The atonement has satisfied both the love and the right- 
eousness of God — his love, by being a way for the 
recovery and salvation of man; his righteousness, by 
vanquishing sin within the sinner, and vindicating the 
authority of the eternal Will. By setting forth Christ 
Jesus as propitiatory, through faith in his blood, God has 
shown forth his righteousness in the remission of sins, 
and proved himself " just while the justifier of him who 
is of the faith of Jesus.'' The ends of God in the atone- 
ment are those of the regal Paternity — the creation of an 
obedient and happy universe. If these ends are repre- 
sented as the glory of God, it means that the one thing 
which can glorify a good God is the good of his creatures ; 
if, as the salvation of man, it means that the happiness 
of the universe is the beatitude of the Creator. The 
atonement is, therefore, the creation of grace — does not 
create it. . . This atonement, in the degree that it exhibits 
God as a Being who does not need to be appeased or 
moved to mercy, but who suffers unto sacrifice that he may 
save, must have exalted in the eyes of all created intelli- 
gences his character and majesty. 

— Principal A. M. Fairbaim, D. D. 



CHAPTER TWELVE 

THE NECESSITY OF ATONEMENT 

No man is able to realize all the wrong of sin, and 
no man is qualified to decide upon the measure of 
necessity for its atonement. We have never looked 
upon sin except as sinners. A never-failing effect 
of sin is the lessening of ability to see things as 
God sees them. The sinner is infinitely removed 
from knowing all that a righteous and holy God 
feels and thinks about sin. God must, therefore, in- 
struct us as to the necessity, the extent, and the 
form of the atonement. As Doctor Simon says: 

God alone can reveal the divine view of sin. God alone 
can enable man to see and appreciate it. God alone 
can enable man to bear it. God alone can present, as one 
may put it, his bill of claims, and God alone can enable 
man to understand it. 1 

As we are thus shut up and dependent upon the 
word of God, we may thankfully inquire what it has 
to say on the matter. There is no doubt that the 
New Testament uniformly sets forth Christ and his 
death as vitally related to the remission of sins. 
From the cry of John the Baptist : " Behold the 
Lamb of God that taketh (or beareth) away the 

1 " Reconciliation by Incarnation," p. 196. 

187 



188 The Living Atonement 

sin of the world," 2 to the final statement of the 
Apostle John : " He is the propitiation for our sins, 
and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the 
whole world," 3 there is but one thought and testi- 
mony on this matter. 

The Lord's own teaching as to the necessity of his 
death, comes out in the expressions : " Gave his life 
a ransom for many," " My blood poured out unto 
the remission of sins." He repeatedly used the lan- 
guage of necessity in speaking of his death. 4 
Through death he was enabled to " give himself for 
our sins." The necessity of his death is also referred 
to in the following words : " But now once at the 
end (consummation) of the ages hath he been mani- 
fested unto the abolition of sin by his sacrifice." 5 
The word " abolition," though a noun in the orig- 
inal, is translated as a verb (to put away) in both 
the Authorized and the Revised versions. The 
same word occurs in another place in this epistle, in 
which it refers to the annulment of a commandment. 6 
Surely what this passage expresses, the abolish- 
ment of sin, is the primal necessity of the atonement. 

I. The necessity of the atonement may be con- 
sidered under three heads, practical, essential, and 
relational. The last of these will be taken up in the 
next chapter. There is the necessity in the work of 

2 John i~: 29. 8 1 John 2 : 2. 

* Cf. John 3 • 13; Mark 8 : 24; Matt. 26 : 54; Luke 24 : 26, 46. 

8 Heb. 9 : 26. 6 Heb. 7 : 18. 



The Necessity of Atonement 189 

the atonement, the necessity of its existence, and 
the necessity of the relations out of which it grows. 
There is, of course, no hard and fast line of sepa- 
ration between these phases. The history of re- 
demption is itself a proclamation of the practical 
essentials of the atonement. Christ and his death 
are thus announced as the means required. This 
is historical fact, not theory. In such necessity of 
work there are needed instrument, power, contact, 
and sacrifice. Each of these may be taken up in 
order. 

The instrument must, of course, be personal. Not 
only so, it must be a divine and human person. The 
necessity for this may be realized when we take 
into account the range or extent of sin's existence 
and its wrong. The instrument must be in keep- 
ing with the work to be done. As truly as the 
agent in creation could not be less than a divine 
person, so with the atonement. This was a re- 
creation far more difficult and costly than creation. 
The instrument is to be in perfect fitness to right 
the wrong of sin, and therefore must work within 
the realm of human life. To become an effective 
instrument, in the heavy task of atonement, the di- 
vine person must undergo the self-limitation of 
incarnation, and of identification with sin. 

The kind of power needed is determined by the 
spiritual, moral, and personal nature of the atone- 
ment. It must be proportionate to the work to be 
done. Atonement can be effected only by that which 



190 The Living Atonement 

is naturally stronger than sin. Strong as sin is in 
killing the good, there is need of a good which is 
stronger still in killing sin. There is the necessity 
of a power which is greater in making satisfaction to 
God than that of sin in giving him displeasure. 
There is the need of that which can break sin's 
enchantments, unmask its illusions, overcome its per- 
versions, and create inveterate hatred and repulsion 
toward it. A strength is needed which can snatch 
the bleeding child of humanity from the tiger-jaws 
and slay the man-eater. There is the necessity for 
no less than the right arm of divine energy which 
alone can cut away the tentacles of this octopus of 
iniquity. That power of deity is needed, which can 
disentangle the " Laocoon Group " of humanity 
from evil's reptile toils, and grind under its heel 
every serpent head of sin. 

The necessity of efficient contact is met in the 
incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. 
The wrong of sin being within human and divine 
experience, it was necessary to have a person who 
combined both. The Son of God, therefore became 
the Son of man, entering structurally, organically, 
into the life of humanity. Since the wrongs of sin, 
piled heaven high, have their foundation and reali- 
zation in human experience, they could be under- 
mined and swept away only as there was such en- 
trance into human life. Further, only the Son of 
God is sufficiently in contact with God the Father, 
and with the wrong done him to realize and right 



The Necessity of Atonement 191 

that wrong. Only He who " became flesh " and 
" was made sin " could make full atonement. Christ, 
in his person and experience, met the necessity of di- 
rect, efficient contact with the wrong of sin, and of 
bringing to bear upon it the infinite moral energy 
stored up in a divine person. 

There is always necessity of sacrifice in practical 
affairs. All work is the laying of self and life on 
the altar of toil. The work of the atonement was 
the laying of the person and life of the Son of God 
on the altar of sacrifice. The measure of sacrifice 
in any work depends upon what other lines of ac- 
tivity are open, for whom the work is done, and its 
personal cost in time, pain, humiliation, self-giving, 
and self-limitation. As there was preparatory con- 
tact in the incarnation, so was there also preparatory 
sacrifice. One sacrifice always prepares the way 
for another until the absolute is reached, and it was 
in the atonement. The withdrawal from the cre- 
ating and governing of the world and the stepping 
down from the realm of the infinite to that of the 
finite, from the purely spiritual into that of the 
physical, were sacrifices preparatory to sinking to 
the lower and infinitely more humiliating plane of 
suffering, self-giving, and self-sacrificing in cruci- 
fixion as sin-bearer. 

In the sacrifice of the atonement it was neces- 
sary for Christ to come into personal contact with 
the hideousness, and unutterable loathsomeness of 
iniquity ; to surrender forever his divine being as the 



192 The Living Atonement 

antidote of sin, and his life to the extermination of 
it, tracking down its wrongs and giving himself 
as their rectification. The extent of his sacrifice was 
not so much the suffering and the humiliation of the 
cross as it was the state and place in which the 
cross put him. It was not merely six hours of un- 
utterable agony; it was a sacrifice then begun that 
must go on to the last moment of eternity. 

By means of his death, Christ became the 
adequate sacrifice for sin. Then the greater over- 
whelmed the less. Sin's insistent wrong was 
drowned in the outpour of divine life. At Calvary 
the devastating flames of iniquity were met and 
stayed by the greater blaze of the consuming fire 
of God's love for the lost. There on the world's 
altar the divine flame " purged off the baser fire 
victorious." 

II. The necessity of existence is the second phase 
to be examined. As the atonement is divine in 
origin, the necessity of its existence is the divine 
person who made, rather became it. It is that 
which is necessary to the existence of atonement, not 
that which is necessary to God's existence, with 
which we have to do. The latter would be an impos- 
sible subject for us. Harnack says: 

We should be absolutely at the end of our tether if we 
were to indulge in speculation as to the necessity which 
can have compelled God to require such a sacrificial death/ 

1 " What is Christianity?" p. 169. 



The Necessity of Atonement 193 

On the other hand, if we can in no measure ap- 
prehend this necessity, we never may consider the 
atonement in its relation to God at all. For example, 
we know at least that this necessity did not arise 
from the need of mediation between the different 
parts of the divine nature. The atonement is made 
a ridiculous bewilderment when it is presented as 
that by which God reconciles one part of his nature 
with another, recoups by sacrifice his loss by sin, 
and repays himself for all his suffering on account 
of it by adding still more pain for himself. Men 
feel to-day that all such presentations of the divine 
nature in making atonement are morbid and me- 
chanical. The old water-tight-compartment psy- 
chology was in the main to blame for such views. 
God's love making atonement to his righteousness, 
his grace to his holiness, his mercy to his justice, 
were statements grounded in the belief that there 
were difficulties within the divine nature, which thus 
needed bridging over. 

That outworn psychology is largely a thing of the 
past. God's nature is a unity with which even sin 
cannot interfere. His love is not separable from his 
holiness; his justice could not conflict with his 
grace ; his love is as righteous as his justice ; his 
grace is as holy as his holiness; and his mercy is 
as just as his righteousness. His righteousness is 
the righteousness of love and grace; his love and 
grace are the love and grace of perfect holiness. 
The parts of God's nature are not self-centered, 

N 



194 The Living Atonement 

working in separate, independent sections. His jus- 
tice, righteousness, and love are not each a self- 
consciousness seeking its own separate satisfaction. 
Parts of man's nature are in conflict with each 
other because of the derangement of sin within. We 
must not suppose that God is in a similar sorry 
plight. Even in human nature there is no under- 
standing of one part when isolated from the rest. 
This the ripest psychology of the day teaches us. 
Righteousness in God or in man needs something to 
go with it, which is righteous. Holiness in sepa- 
ration ceases to be holiness. Holiness which in cave 
or in monastery, secluded itself from the needs of 
human life, was too imperfect to illustrate holiness in 
God or in man. That is true righteousness which 
rushes to the conflict with unrighteousness. That 
alone is absolute holiness which fights to the death 
the unholiness of sin. The more perfect holiness is, 
the nearer must it press to sin, and the more must 
it close up with it in the battle of extermination. 
The holiness which withdraws, is either afraid of 
itself or is beaten. Holiness in God pictured as 
shrinking away from humanity unless appeased, is a 
caricature. Bishop Brooks says in one of his imper- 
ishable sermons: 

Go up close to the world and help it; feel for its 
wickedness; pity it; sacrifice yourself for it, so shall you 
be surest not to sacrifice yourself to it. .. If you have a 
friend who is dishonest or impure, the surest way to save 
yourself from him, is to try and save him. More pure 



The Necessity of Atonement 195 

and more secure in purity than the Pharisee man or 
woman who draws back the spotless skirts from the reach 
of the poor fallen creature who clutches at them, is the 
pitying man or woman who, in nearest brotherhood or sis- 
terhood, goes close to the wretched sinner and takes him 
by the hand to lift him up. 8 

That is not absolute holiness which can do noth- 
ing about sin unless first appeased. That is not 
absolute justice which knows only how to condemn. 
True righteousness will seek the restoration of the 
unrighteous. God has vindicated his righteousness 
and holiness as completely in saving sinners as in 
condemning sin. All his nature goes out to fallen 
man; he is fatherly all the way through. All his 
nature goes out in condemnation of sin, demand- 
ing its death and the righting of its wrong. He is 
also righteous all the way through. The atonement 
is not an appeasement of one recalcitrant portion of 
the divine nature by another. 

III. Let us avoid the other extreme of denying that 
the atonement was a satisfaction to the divine nature. 
There is nothing which God or man does that does 
not affect them. Primarily the atonement was not 
for the sake of mere effect upon God or man. An 
atonement designed merely for moral influence is 
without moral immanence. An atonement, the pri- 
mal necessity of which is moral influence upon God, 
is little better than one, the primal necessity of which 
is moral influence upon man. The necessity of the 

8 " Sermons," First Series, p. 189. 



196 The Living Atonement 

atonement was primarily to meet the moral and spir- 
itual situation caused by sin. Creation was not for 
the sake of its effect upon God ; yet it had effect upon 
him. One cannot think of anything which an un- 
selfish, perfect God would do primarily for effect 
upon himself. Nevertheless, there was Godward 
efficacy in the atonement. The Scriptures say so. 
God was propitiated; and sin was expiated. It has 
been said in several places of late that never more 
can the atonement be acceptably presented as an 
appeasement to God. When there is thus a con- 
flict between the clear teaching of the Bible and 
ethical sense, we may rest assured that it is a case, 
either of mistaken ethical sense, or of the temporary 
effect of the transition of that sense, probably to 
higher ground. When this step in progress has 
been taken, the Scripture teaching on this subject 
will not be found either discredited or out of date. 
The Bible is always in advance of us. When prog- 
ress in the ethical conception of appeasement has 
reached the point where God is thought too good to 
require appeasement, there is need then for an equal 
advance in our thinking on the ethics of appease- 
ment. All natures, even the ethical, have their fit 
and rightful appeasements. The higher our ethical 
conception of God, the higher must be our ethical 
conception of the appeasement which his nature will 
demand. 

The utter failure of advance in the ethical con- 
ception of divine appeasement is seen in the saying, 



The Necessity of Atonement 197 

" The God who propitiates himself needs no pro- 
pitiation." The statement contradicts its own asser- 
tion. It blinks the fact that the higher the order of 
nature, the greater the necessity of its acting in con- 
formity with itself. The nature of God is such 
that he must satisfy himself in everything that he 
does, and be true to himself everywhere. It would 
look foolish to say that God, who satisfies himself, 
needs no satisfaction; but this is precisely parallel 
to the statement we are considering. There can be 
no propitiation which is not satisfaction. 

The Godward satisfaction of the atonement was 
spiritual and ethical. It was spiritual in form, but 
not fractionally so, for it was satisfaction, not to 
one part as furnished by another, but to all of the 
divine nature. It was satisfaction to the entire spirit- 
ual being of God. His holiness was not appeased 
by his love; for that assumes that his love loved 
what his holiness condemned, and hence was want- 
ing in righteousness. Holiness is the abstract of 
perfect personality ; God's holiness is his spiritual 
wholeness as deity. That which satisfied his holi- 
ness satisfied not part of his nature, but the whole- 
ness of his spirit and nature and being. There was 
no part of God's nature which did not receive satis- 
faction in what was done for sin's undoing, and for 
the establishment of righteousness, love, goodness, 
and holiness in man. Let us remember that there 
is a world of difference between the love of sin and 
the love of a sinner. The one is all impure, and 



198 The Living Atonement 

springs from unholiness; the other is all pure and 
springs from holiness. 

The satisfaction of God was ethical also in sub- 
stance. The moral values and substance lost by 
sin were made good by the atonement. The ethical 
structure impaired by iniquity was relaid in founda- 
tion and rebuilt in glorious pattern and permanence 
by the atonement. The righteousness of the atone- 
ment satisfied the whole moral nature of God by 
enabling it in its entirety to enter into normal 
relations with man. What was lost in ethical 
righteousness to the moral world because of sin, 
was balanced by an ethical equivalent in the right- 
eousness of Christ's redemption. It was an ethical 
satisfaction, because God zvas more satisfied in what 
he gave in the atonement than in zvhat he received. 
Ethical nature never sacrifices for the sake of right, 
without being more satisfied therein than by any 
other means. Righteousness and love never make 
right at their own cost for the sinful yet beloved, 
without being more deeply propitiated thereby than 
they could be in any other way. The greatest divine 
satisfaction of the atonement was in giving rather 
than in receiving. Even with God and atonement 
it is " more blessed to give than to receive." This 
is how it happened that God could propitiate him- 
self. 

It was not suffering as such which satisfied God in 
the atonement, for that would render it unethical. 
Suffering cannot be an end in the satisfaction of 



The Necessity of Atonement 199 

God. It is a means only when no other will do. It 
was the end attained by means of the suffering that 
reached the heart of the divine. The suffering of 
the atonement was the pain of immaculate holiness 
in cleansing human guilt, and of infinite righteous- 
ness and love pressing through the finite to the in- 
finite beyond. While no doubt God is pleased that 
sin should be such to him that it must cause him suf- 
fering, yet such suffering may not belong to the 
atonement itself. It is at this point that there is 
much confusion. The effect of the atonement is 
stated as its cause, and the effect of sin upon the 
divine nature is looked upon as the effect of the 
atonement itself. It is at this point that there is 
that it is a burden which causes suffering to God. 
That is an added wrong. Two wrongs do not make 
a right. The age-long suffering of God on account 
of human sin cannot be called its atonement; it is 
its lasting disgrace and infinite crime. 

The divine satisfaction in atonement was also 
personal. There are several realms in which both 
divine and human satisfaction and possession are 
possible, and in ascending scale of worth. They 
are the material, the mental, the moral, and the 
personal. Since our dearest and highest possessions 
are personal, thence may come our greatest pain or 
pleasure, our greatest sorrow or satisfaction. When 
Paul said, " That I might win Christ," he referred 
to the highest realm of possession, and to the highest 
person who may be possessed. The Father and all 



200 The Living Atonement 

else are in Christ possessed, or lost. One cannot 
fitly measure by even the best human standards, the 
power of the persons of the Trinity to give satis- 
faction to one another. The Son, in his great work 
of creation, gave satisfaction to the Father and to 
the Spirit. In his twofold personal relationship to 
the Father and to men, Christ was fitted to give a 
fuller divine satisfaction in the greater work of 
redemption. What Jesus was in personal relation 
to God and man explains the heart of the satis- 
faction of the atonement. Deep as the depth of 
divine personality was the satisfaction which Christ 
rendered and is still rendering to the Father. It 
is a shoreless ocean whose unbounded fulness, 
measureless expanse, and fathomless deeps are 
known only to him who made it, and to him to 
whom it was given. 

The fitness of the Christ for the work of cre- 
ation was at the same time his fitness for the work 
of redemption. He could create to the glory of the 
Father; and therefore he must do so. He could 
sacrifice himself to the far greater glory of God in 
the world's redemption; and therefore he felt the 
necessity so to do. In that fathomless mystery of 
the Trinity, the Son was the necessity of creating 
and to creation. If we could know why this was so, 
we would then know fully why he was the necessity 
for making atonement, and to the making of atone- 
ment. He was the Person of the Deity fitted by his 
power of self-limitation to reach that utmost point 



The Necessity of Atonement 201 

of sacrifice, the absolute and infinite, in giving him- 
self to be the atonement for sin. 

The atonement is Deity filling the deepest need of 
humanity. In redemption Christ subdues all things 
unto God, and meets the deepest necessity of the 
whole universe. At the creation the morning stars 
sang together; at the redemption of the world the 
Sun of Righteousness arose upon it. By the Living 
Atonement the estranged was reconciled, the Father 
satisfied, the lost saved, and the storm on life's sea 
hushed into everlasting quiet. 

All things grow sweet in him, 
In him are all things reconciled. 
All fierce extremes 
That beat along time's shore 
Like chidden waves grow mild, 
And creep to kiss his feet. 



XIII 

FATHERHOOD, FORGIVENESS, AND 
ATONEMENT 



On the one hand, Christianity, by this filial union with God, 
is seen to be the ideal and perfect religion; on the other, 
it appears as a real fact in the consciousness of Jesus 
Christ. . . What can men have in the shape of life superior 
to the life of perfect and reciprocal affection — God giv- 
ing himself to man, and realizing in him his paternity ; man 
giving himself to God without fear, and realizing in him 
his humanity? Is not religious evolution accomplished 
when these two terms, God and man, opposed to each 
other at the origin of conscious life on earth, interpene- 
trate each other till they reach the moral unity of love, in 
which God becomes interior to man and lives in him, in 
which man becomes interior to God, and finds in God the 
full expansion of his being? Christianity is therefore the 
absolute and final religion of mankind. 

— August e Sabatier. 



The necessity of not in any way rending the fabric of 
ethical obligations by the going forth of forgiveness, is 
further emphasized by the fact that sin is recognized 
through an aroused conscience. The moral sense once 
awakened cannot be allayed by any method which comes 
short of satisfying its insistent demands. Forgiveness 
must be in harmony with the moral sentiments, or it is 
not forgiveness. -Charles Allen Dinsmore. 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

FATHERHOOD, FORGIVENESS, AND ATONEMENT 

The importance and character of anything may 
in some measure be judged by the importance and 
character of its relations — the relations out of which 
it grows and in which it works. As to the atone- 
ment, Fatherhood is a relation out of which 
it grows, and forgiveness a relation in which 
it works. In fuller measure the relations of the 
atonement are the social, moral, and spiritual re- 
lations, involving the existence of sin within them. 
The spiritual is the foundational and extensive, the 
social is the structural, and the ethical is the quali- 
tative of the other two. Since the atonement is the 
work of God, its relations find their origin in his 
relations to man and to sin. 

I. The atonement did not in anywise change the 
relation of God to sin; rather, it made it manifest. 
There is no atonement that could change the divine 
estimate of sin, which would not thereby undo itself. 
An atonement would need to be atoned for, which 
condoned sin. What it did change was the line of 
active relations between God and sin. So, we may 
say, the atonement was a revelation of the unalter- 

205 



2o6 The Living Atonement 

able divine attitude to sin, and of the price which 
God was willing to pay for its destruction. Nowhere 
else is this estimate so fully expressed. Christ's 
cries of agony on the cross uttered everlasting ver- 
dict upon iniquity. Calvary stands forever as the 
supreme court judgment seat where final sentence 
upon sin was pronounced by the Judge of all the 
earth. The heart of sin, as well as the heart of God, 
was there laid bare. Sin manifested its immutable 
innermost in crucifying Jesus Christ. Its unalter- 
able enmity to righteousness, holiness, goodness, 
unselfishness, and love made there the clearest and 
strongest declaration of itself. 

The changed relation of divine activity was due 
to the institution of a new relation of a divine 
person to sin, in which the deepest resources of 
God's nature were called into play. The Immutable 
had waited for " the fulness of time " in which to 
change the expression of his relation to sin to one 
of fulness and perfection. Jesus Christ, " the same 
yesterday, yea to-day, and forever," expressed com- 
pletely by his atonement the changed and the change- 
less divine relations to sin. Because of what sin 
means to him and to the moral universe of which he 
is the head and heart, God must fight this enemy to 
the death, and right its wrong. 

II. In the relations of the atonement we now come 
to the relation of God to man. Every created thing 
is given in its creation the law of its being, in which 



Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Atonement 207 

are inherently determined the relations in which it 
should exist. God decided the nature of his rela- 
tions to man by the nature which he gave him. In 
creating him a moral being, he instituted a set of 
moral relations to him. It was man, not moral law, 
that he made. The old view of decretal moral law 
was wrong. Such laws are not made. Laws are. 
Moral laws, including the law of atonement, are as 
uncreated as God himself. When there is a change 
in the moral relations between God and man, it is 
according to moral possibility. The latent in moral 
life, not the new in moral law, is brought into 
activity. 

Moral possibility is downward, as well as up- 
ward; otherwise it would not be moral. Degener- 
ation must be possible; it is immoral, not unmoral. 
There could be no right if wrong were impossible. 
Non-existence is implied in existence, and non- 
being in being. There is nothing made for which 
everything is good, for that would deny the law 
of its being. There is nothing made, the unmaking 
of which is not possible, unless conserved in the 
being of God. The loss of existence-relation to 
God would be a reversal of the law of being. For 
all created things existence is made possible by 
being true to the law of their existence-relation to 
God. In complex natures there is the possibility of 
part of their natures being undone, as is the case 
when the body dies. The moral, like the physical, 
may, from its very nature, be abused, ruined, and 



208 The Living Atonement 

undone. May not this be the case in regard to 
those finally lost; namely, that they are morally 
wholly undone? Must not what still remains hold 
true to the law of unmoral being in God, or be un- 
done also? Perhaps moral development requiring 
the conflict with the anti-moral, involves the possi- 
bility of the lost, filling some such place in a non- 
moral existence. Even an anti-moral being must, in 
some way, be an existence in God ; otherwise it 
would lose existence. These are deep matters, and 
may seem to involve contradictions, if not ab- 
surdities. It is easy here to get tangled in the web 
of one's own thinking. Nevertheless, immortality 
must be rooted in integral relation to God. He can- 
not give to anything or any one an existence inde- 
pendent of and entirely outside of his own. Noth- 
ing is immortal, except by the law of its being in and 
relation to God. Where this line of thinking leads 
to, will be determined by the law of mental com- 
pulsion. It need not land in a non-moral mo- 
nism or an impersonal pantheism. An immortality, 
apart from that of God, may be left to the discus- 
sions of metaphysicians. 

III. The normal relation of God to man is that of 
Father. This grows out of what God and man are 
to each other in moral, social, and spiritual being. 
There is nothing else that may be named in which 
the Fatherhood of God could be grounded. Father- 
hood combines in its content as a term the perfect 



Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Atonement 209 

adjustment of the social and the ethicaL There are 
those who hold that God can be Father to men only 
as they are in Christ; thus sharing in his Sonship 
relation to the Father. This would narrow the 
natural and direct Fatherhood of God exclusively 
to Christ. It is true that originally by the Son, and 
in him, all Sonship came into being. He is the pat- 
tern and prototype of humanity, and of sonship. 
Both creational and redemptional sonship have pre- 
cisely the same origin in Christ. 

We may note that the substance of this original 
Sonship of Christ himself is ethical as well as 
social ; and a perfect balance of the social and the 
ethical must have been characteristic of that original 
or creational sonship of man in Christ. It is true 
that now in man's abnormal state he cannot enter 
into sonship relation with the Father, except 
through the Son ; but the same was true in the be- 
ginning. A latent human sonship is revealed in the 
very possibility of Christ's saving men unto it ; 
otherwise Christ himself could not have been incar- 
nated into humanity, and awakened men to sonship 
by the power of his own. We were created in son- 
ship in Christ, and redeemed in sonship in the Son. 
The view that divine sonship is not latent in and 
normal to humanity, is like the old view that re- 
ligious powers are imparted, not awakened, at con- 
version. The moral and social natures are already 
in man before his regeneration, and are there wait- 
ing for their adjustment in divine sonship. The 
o 



210 The Living Atonement 

harmonious interdependence of the moral and the 
social nature is the very image and likeness of 
God; but it is so because it is then inhabited by, 
interfused with, and controlled by means of, the 
Spirit of the Father. " As many as are led by the 
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." 

That the Fatherhood of God is normal in the re- 
lation which he bears to man, is denied also on the 
ground that the divine Fatherhood is a figure of 
speech. There is no divine mother ; hence the Father 
is but a metaphor. This is pure pedantry. The 
classification of the form of an expression used is 
not a nullification of the truth it conveys. The classi- 
fication may be very arbitrary. Truth expressed by 
a figure is as real and as definite as that expressed by 
a word. Nearly all our words began their history 
as figures of speech. The term language itself was 
originally the metaphor of the tongue. We still 
speak of our mother-tongue. Why not object that 
there is in reality no language, because we do not 
also speak of our father-tongue? In the course of 
usage the figure passes over into the term; but the 
thing designated has not changed. 

Fatherhood is the unchanged fact, whether the 
word designating it be classed as figure, or term, or 
name. We know the earthly first; and therefore call 
the heavenly Fatherhood the figure. Growing up 
in the moral and spiritual relations, the earthly tends 
to become more of the figurative, and the heavenly 
the foundation term. Fatherhood is a heavenly 



Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Atonement 211 

term with an earthly meaning. It is not so much, 
therefore, an earthly term with a heavenly meaning, 
as it is the reverse. Mere sex description of father- 
hood or motherhood does not reach the heart of the 
matter in their social, moral, and spiritual character. 
This refers to the initial begetting only. There is 
a higher which follows. The essential substance in 
either is the imparting life and the likeness of God. 
The list of genealogy in the Gospel of Luke ends, 
" which was the son of Adam, which was the son 
of God." Fathers and mothers are transmitters of, 
and links in the imparted life of the Father in 
heaven. God is our Father. Satan's children are 
every one stolen from him. The devil made and 
gave life to none of them ; he unmade them. He is 
the great kidnapper and child-thief of the moral 
universe. Christ is " the Only Begotten " ; we are 
the only begetting. We are becoming sons. God 
is more and more begetting himself in us, in a pro- 
gressive sonship. Christ is " the Only Begotten " 
because he is the perfected infinite begetting of God 
the Father. We may be " begotten anew." 

IV. Every man is, by reason of the spiritual struc- 
ture of his being, a growing son of the Most High. 
Why does he not always realize the natural benefit 
of his birthright? Because the spiritual disposition 
which should correspond with this structure, and is 
the active force in social relationship, may be ab- 
normal. It may claim the social rights and privi- 



212 The Living Atonement 

leges without fulfilling the ethical obligations. In 
the main, experience is made up of a continuous 
twofold reaction between disposition and structure, 
and between the social and the ethical. There is 
also the reaction of environment. The social na- 
ture compels man to reach out, for it is essentially 
sensitive to surroundings. When it has taken in 
that which disagrees with the moral nature and 
interferes with the social relations, sin has entered. 
Man wronged his Father by entering into a 
false relationship with that which is naturally op- 
posed to the divine Fatherhood. He could do so 
only voluntarily. The wrong meant that he willed 
contrary to the known will of the Father, and there- 
fore did not want the Father in heaven to be a father 
to him. Once this took place, the disposition of 
sonship was lost ; and his experience was then char- 
acterized by the spirit of that which the soul pre- 
ferred to God. The disposition which intuitively 
willed the will of the Father, no longer had the soul 
to itself. Because man is a moral being and not a 
machine, he may enter upon an experience not 
represented in the original ethical quality of his 
being. Because he is a moral being, he cannot 
escape moral obligations in choosing a false alliance. 
A disposition to break the false alliance may take 
possession of him, and a sense of the injury to God 
and self may be exercised. To right the wrong, it is 
necessary that the meaning of, and the responsibility 
for, the injury to God be realized on the part of the 



Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Atonement 213 

sinner, and that a purpose of reparation possess the 
soul. As Doctor Simon puts it : 

The impulse of the offender ought to be to make up for 
his shortcomings and misdoings, even as the impulse of the 
righteous is to render service and glory to the name of 
his God. 1 

While there is nothing in the moral nature of 
man to prevent a change of disposition, there is 
everything in the nature of sin to cause this possi- 
bility to be farther and farther removed. As there 
is no isolated evil, to be stronger than any evil is 
to be stronger than all evil. Man's power of re- 
sistance had already proved itself not so great as 
that of sin's aggressiveness. It is clear that man 
of himself cannot break away from the stronger 
power which has bound him, rectify the wrong of 
his sin, and make himself right with God. Sin so 
enervates and enslaves him, that he cannot reverse 
the process of his sinful experience, the trend of 
which is then farther and farther away from re- 
sponse to the good and atonement for the bad. No 
man has been able to exterminate from his experi- 
ence the sin-life. No man has subdued the sin- 
power which took him captive. There is no human 
experience free from sin; and no man has made 
atonement for it. From the manward end of this 
relation there is then absolutely no hope. 

This renders the necessity for divine intervention 

1 " Reconciliation by Incarnation,'' p. 196. 



214 The Living Atonement 

in an atonement all the greater, if the divine creation 
is to be saved from proving worse than failure. God 
knew all that would be involved in his relation to 
man before he made him. He knew what would 
happen. He knew what evil had already done, and 
that he could not exclude it from the earth and man 
be man. Man's moral existence rendered it impos- 
sible to save him from conflict with evil. God could 
create innocence, but not character. Contest with 
evil is the creator of moral character. Man had 
not learned to resist ; and the cunning seductiveness 
of sin made it fatally easy to yield. In such cir- 
cumstances God, in his fatherliness, felt the necessity 
of doing what he could. He was as much attacked 
as man. The contest was his as well as man's. His 
relations were at stake. The strength of righteous- 
ness, and love, in the divine Fatherhood being able 
to kill the evil, he must have felt responsibility as 
well as desire to right the wrong. Sin took ad- 
vantage of the weak end of the relation between 
God and man ; and man was unable to help himself 
or to right the wrong. The Father, therefore, took 
up the problem ; otherwise the divine relation would 
have been a solitary gleam of light, then total ob- 
scuration in the darkness of a night that would 
know no morning. The sonship of man, not the 
Fatherhood of God, was mastered by sin. Iniquity 
demonstrated how deep was the atoning resource- 
fulness of the divine relation. Divine Fatherhood is, 
therefore, a firmament set not only with glittering 



Fatherhood 3 Forgiveness, Atonement 21 $ 

stars of Providence, but also with the central sun 
of Redemption. 

V. The forgiveness of sin bears no relation what- 
ever to the atonement, except to show it unnecessary. 
This expresses the thought of some on this matter. 
They reason as follows : In a moral world, forgive- 
ness of wrong is basal, and its sole condition is re- 
pentance of the wrongdoer. On this basis alone 
does God forgive ; he needs no help of atonement to 
forgive. To remit sin on the basis of something 
which he himself has done, would be to act out of 
harmony with the moral world. If atonement makes 
right the wrong, forgiveness is then not needed. 
These two, atonement and forgiveness, are mutually 
exclusive. 

In reply, it may be said that forgiveness is not the 
real basis of the moral world. There is that in this 
world which is basal to forgiveness itself, for there 
are circumstances where forgiveness would be a 
crime. To owe money may not be a wrong, and to 
pay it may not be atonement; but to seek to de- 
fraud the creditor is wrong; and to repent, ask for- 
giveness, and pay the debt, shows that in this case 
there is room for forgiveness, along with atonement. 
If there is refusal to make good the injury or loss, 
forgiveness is out of place. Faith in atonement 
therefore, accompanies and even lies at the basis 
of faith in forgiveness. Repentance and forgiveness 
do not meet the whole ethical necessity. A moral 



2i6 The Living Atonement 

wrong always lies deeper than the human relations. 
When David wakened to the deeper meaning of 
his sin, he said : " Against thee, thee only, have I 
sinned." The test of genuine repentance is readi- 
ness to make reparation or to accept atonement by 
another where reparation on the part of the wrong- 
doer is impossible. Very little can man do in ma- 
king right the wrong of his sin. He can repent of it, 
with the help of God's Spirit. Since the spirit of 
repentance is itself a divine gift, God forgives on 
the basis of something which he himself has done, 
when he accepts repentance. God may give re- 
pentance only to those to whom he may give the 
benefit of his atonement. Power of repentance is 
lost when faith in the extermination of wrong by 
means of atonement, is gone. 

Try what repentance can : what can it not ? 
Yet what can it; when one cannot repent? 
O wretched state ! O bosom, black as death ! 
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, 
Art more engag'd. 2 

If a son has contracted a bad habit, and the evil 
too strong for him has thus fastened itself upon him, 
forgiveness of his wrong to the father does not meet 
the latter's problem of his son's release. This is 
similar to the case with sin — it is too strong for us. 
Forgiveness alone would not meet the problem of 
our release. Wrong is blotted out, not in forgiveness 

2 " Hamlet," Act III, Scene 3- 



Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Atonement 217 

alone, but in forgiveness and atonement. Each has 
its place; and atonement cannot take the place of 
forgiveness, rendering the latter unnecessary; nor 
can forgiveness take the place of atonement, render- 
ing reparation unnecessary. 

It is not well to put the forgiveness of God and 
that of man on the same level. The wrong to God 
is always infinitely greater and his forgiveness 
carries with it much wider relations than that of 
man. It is not that God is unwilling and needs the 
help of atonement to forgive ; it is rather that atone- 
ment fulfils his purpose of making forgiveness ef- 
fectual. Because atonement is a necessity to divine 
forgiveness, we must not assume that atonement 
meets a lack in the divine willingness to forgive. 
Prayer is a necessity to Christian life, and to much 
of God's giving. Because men must pray in order 
to receive from him, God is not therefore unwilling 
to give. As Bishop Brooks said : " Prayer is not 
overcoming God's reluctance; it is taking hold on 
his willingness." So atonement is not God over- 
coming his implacability; it is the expression of his 
grace. As prayer is none the less a necessity, but 
all the more so because of God's willingness to give, 
so atonement is none the less a necessity, but all 
the more so because of God's willingness to forgive. 

True forgiveness is never without cost to the for- 
giving one. In the case of the divine forgiveness, 
its cost is expressed in the divine atonement. Once 
men believed in fiat creation. God spake the word, 



218 The Living Atonement 

and, magically, the worlds sprang into existence and 
leaped to their orbits in space. Now it is believed 
that creation was a patient work involving countless 
long ages of divine thought and toil. Geology, in 
its book of stony pages, tells the fascinating story 
of what creation cost God. That is but one side of 
the matter, and the less important. How much of 
himself it was necessary for God to put into his 
created world, who can tell? The bestowal of his 
immanence is the larger part of what creation cost 
God. 

There are those who believe in what might be 
called " fiat forgiveness." They are as far behind 
the times as those who still believe in fiat creation. 
Each case furnishes a cheap and unworthy view of 
God and his work. It cost God infinitely more to 
be where he could forgive sin, than it did to lay the 
rock-ribbed structure of earth, and form and fashion 
the whole universe. Forgiveness cost the atone- 
ment ; and the atonement cost a far greater measure 
of self-limitation and immanence than did the cre- 
ation of the world. 

As there are conditions to be met on man's side 
before forgiveness may be obtained, so on the divine 
side also. Charles Allen Dinsmore refers to this 
when he says: 

But surely there are certain conditions to be fulfilled 
before forgiveness can flow from God to man. For these 
conditions, the work of Jesus provided. He set forth the 
chief factors which enter into pardon — love, holiness, sin 



Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Atonement 219 

— in their true nature. He wrought a work in our in- 
terest, as it were, outside of us, without which God could 
not have consistently forgiven us. 8 

The responsibility which God must assume in for- 
giving human sin, is measured by the sacrifice of 
his Son. The appeal to the parable of the Prodigal 
Son to prove that forgiveness is conditioned on 
man's side only, is of no avail. Principal J. G. Simp- 
son well says : 

But it is obvious that even the parable of the Prodigal 
Son would not ring true in human ears, unless it was 
forever interpreted by a transaction which gives due 
weight to the enormity of a sin that entailed the sacrifice 
of the Father's only Son.* 

Atonement is the larger ethical problem of which 
forgiveness is a minor part. As the Old Testament 
was the pledge of the New, and the revelation of 
the prophets the pledge of that in Christ, so all 
divine forgiveness was the pledge of the utmost 
that God could do in meeting the whole necessity 
created by sin. Any act of divine righteousness and 
love is the pledge of all possible divine activity. 
God's forgiveness of sin was the pledge of the atone- 
ment ; and the atonement was the measure of his for- 
giveness. Was that not implied in what Paul once 
wrote? He said: 

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemp- 
tion that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be 

8 " Atonement in Literature and Life." p. 207. 

* " Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels," art. " Atonement." 



220 The Living Atonement 

propitiatory, through faith in his blood, to show his right- 
eousness because of the passing over of the sins done 
aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, 
I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he 
might be just and the justifier of him that hath faith in 
Jesus. 8 

8 Rom. 3 : 24-26. 



XIV 

THE IDENTIFICATION OF CHRIST 
WITH SIN 



The difficulty of discovering a theory of the Atonement 
that shall command general assent is very great. But 
however great the difficulty is, we know that we must 
have a theory of the Atonement. We cannot think without 
it. We cannot hope, and we cannot pray without it. It 
is not enough to know that Christ died for our sins 
according to the Scriptures. It is necessary to bring his 
death and our sins into contact by some working theory 
of the Atonement. 

— Expository Times, August, 1909. 



When I am asked for a theory of the Atonement, I ever 
reply that, in the mighty movement, the Lord himself said 
" Why ? " And if he asked that question, I dare not imagine 
that I can ever explain the deep central varieties of this 
mystery and pain. Men stand outside the circle of that 
incomprehensible agony; they behold him forsaken of 
God, at the uttermost issue of sin, in the deepest pro- 
fundities of sorrow, in the mystery of an awful silence ; 
and all this as they hear him say, " My God." Let there 
be no attempt to penetrate further into that hallowed and 
awful realm; and yet the subject of the sufferings of 
Christ cannot be so left. 

— G. Campbell Morgan, D. D. 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

THE IDENTIFICATION OF CHRIST WITH SIN 

All spiritual processes are difficult to apprehend. 
Their profound meaning and subtle nature baffle ex- 
haustive investigation. The higher their order within 
the realm of experience the harder is it to grasp the 
secret of the inner principle at work. Especially is 
this applicable to the atonement. All of its proc- 
esses may not be explained in full ; they may, how- 
ever, be classified as active and passive, or from 
another point of view, as institutive and operative. 
The institutive process, by which Jesus Christ be- 
came the personal atonement for sin, is the highest 
of all within the spiritual realm. The atonement 
is, in the main, a transcendent or ultranatural process 
in its institution. This might discourage us from 
attempting to understand and explain it; but we 
have several things to encourage and help us. First, 
it is in the realm of ethical experience. Though 
Jesus' experience transcends ours by as much as he 
transcends us in character and power, it is not an 
unsearchable mystery. The transcendent part of 
his ethical experience cannot contradict in moral 
principle that of the lower part which is parallel to 
our own. 

223 



224 The Living Atonement 

God wishes us to know the utmost possible in this 
great subject ; and we have, therefore, the help of his 
word and his Spirit. The deep things of God are 
fully known by the Spirit. " The Spirit searcheth 
all things, yea, the deep things of God." The Spirit 
and the word agree in common revelation. It is not 
an accident that so many facts are given us in the 
Scriptures as to the experience of Christ in his 
death. Let us be thankful for the supplementing 
where our limitations would have denied. 

I. The preparatory experience of Gethsemane is 
worthy of some attention. When 

Into the woods my Master went, 
Clean f orespent, f orespent, 

he realized as he had not before what suffering and 
sacrifice were in store for him. All previous an- 
ticipation was greatly intensified. It became the 
most vivid consciousness. As he stood in the chill 
shadow of his death, it caused him to shiver. Many 
meet death seemingly without fear. Better men 
meet " the grim monster " calmly despite tremendous 
fear. Why was the heroic Christ so painfully af- 
fected by his impending death? It certainly was 
not because of any lack in him. In part, it was be- 
cause of his realizing the character of his coming 
death. 

Jesus knew more than any what was in death ; he 
knew best what his own death would mean; that it 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 22$ 

would be the doorway to his self-sacrifice forever. 
It would be a painful birth into an endless life of 
self-limitation in still closer identification with hu- 
manity. It would involve the perpetuation forever 
of the sacrifice made in the incarnation. It would 
be a suffering transition, and painful emergence 
into a new order of subsistence with, and indwelling 
in, humanity. His death would make him the pos- 
session of man in a much larger way than did the 
incarnation. Henceforth he would have no life 
apart from organic union with the human race. It 
meant that he must forever be the life of humanity 
by the endless sacrifice of imparting himself to 
humanity. 

One of the shallowest definitions of death asserts 
that it is a separation of soul and body. There is 
death where there is no soul and body to separate. 
We should have to be able to define life in order to 
define death. When it is said that life is reciprocity 
with environment, organic elemental replacement, 
performance of function, building of self-structure, 
and knowing according to measure of capacity the 
primal source of life, we have but told what life 
does, not what it is. In defining death, the best 
we can do is to say that it is the cessation of all this. 
The larger the life the greater the death. Life on 
an infinite scale involves the possibility of death on 
an infinite scale. In the agony on the cross the Son 
would cease to know life in the Father; and this 
would be the very essence of death to him. Sum 
p 



226 The Living Atonement 

up, then, all that the crucifixion of the Son of God 
meant, and it is no wonder that the light of day- 
turned into midnight darkness, the temple veil fell 
rent in twain, and the tremors of that death shook 
the world in earthquake convulsions. 

Perhaps this preparatory process, most of all, con- 
sisted in maintaining unflinching steadfastness of 
willingness to be offered up in sacrifice for sin. 
The difficulty in doing so would be increased in 
proportion as Jesus realistically anticipated his com- 
ing experience as sinbearer. The utmost suffering 
would come to him from being plunged into personal 
contact with the utter loathsomeness of iniquity; 
and he therefore suffered terribly by anticipation 
of the deathly revulsion of soul he would experience 
on the morrow. 

Gethsemane was the point in the path of savior- 
hood where Jesus stood for a moment or two look- 
ing down into the abyss of death. Into its bitter 
gloom he must now plunge. No wonder that an 
awful agony seized him as he stood there on the 
brink of death gazing into the void and taking in 
the full meaning of the next step ! Mark says : 

He began to be greatly amazed — literally, stricken with 
deadly horror — and sore troubled. And he said unto them, 
My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death. 1 

Luke, the physician, describes the physical as well 
as the spiritual suffering: 

1 Mark 14 : 33, 34. 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 227 

And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and 
his sweat became, as it were, great drops of blood falling- 
down upon the ground. 2 

Despite the suffering and the bitterness of the 
cup, the preparation of prayer and self-surrender 
went on unswervingly. He held perfectly true to 
the Father's will of man's redemption by his sacri- 
fice. What the wilderness temptation was in prepa- 
ration for his ministry, the experience of Geth- 
semane was to Calvary. In each case the Prince 
of this world came and found nothing in him. 

Out of the woods my Master went, 

And he was well content. 

Out of the woods my Master came, 

Content with death and shame. 

When Death and Shame would woo him last, 

From under the trees they drew him last; 

T was on a tree they slew him — last, 

When out of the woods he came. 

II. The most remarkable saying on the cross is 
the one most often quoted : " My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" It was not the only one 
of its kind. The tragedy closed with a similar cry : 
" And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and 
yielded up his spirit." In the space of time inter- 
vening between these two utterances, who can guess 
the full meaning of the experience that caused them ? 

2 Luke 22 : 44. The expression " as it were," does not deny that 
his sweat really contained blood. Compare John 7: 10: "Then 
went he also up, not publicly, but as it were in secret." (werei and 



228 The Living Atonement 

All the mystery of sin and of redemption are 
wrapped up in them. 

Jesus Christ could not become personal atonement 
for sin by anything short of an experience of per- 
sonal identification with it. Any explanation of the 
atonement which obscures this process must dissi- 
pate the largest part of its energy in explaining 
away divinely given data as to the experience of 
Christ during the crucifixion. It has become the 
fashion to urge that it is unsafe to build up a theory 
of the atonement on a single saying of Christ uttered 
on the cross. It would be safer to do this than to 
build up one which to stand, must -first of all prove 
untrue this great saying of Christ concerning the 
zvithdrawal of the Father's presence. The personal 
theory of the atonement is not by any means built 
on a single statement of Scripture; it is shaped 
large enough to provide ample room for all the re- 
lated statements of the word of God. 

The cry of dereliction is not the only proof that 
Christ was experientially identified with sin as he 
hung on the cross ; but it is an important statement 
of the fact, and its meaning must, therefore, be 
defended. Let us not be guilty of squarely contra- 
dicting these words of Christ. Let it not be said 
that God had not forsaken him; and was never in 
fact nearer him ; for this would mean that his worst 
agony was due to hallucination ; and that at least for 
once we knew better than he did. Never do we 
so need to be corrected as when we thus attempt to 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 229 

correct the Christ. Never was the man born who 
could convince of error him who is the truth, and 
rectify the processes of the mind of the Lord. God 
may be very near, so far as space is concerned, but 
far off spiritually. Once Jesus and Judas were side 
by side in space, but infinitely far apart in spirit. 
Moral distances are hardest to traverse; and sepa- 
rated by them from loved ones, the soul drinks the 
cup of bitterest loneliness. 

The best of men, in the very eagerness of their 
interest in the Son of God, are in danger of the sin 
of presumption. Peter was in that plight at 
Csesarea Philippi. To him Christ did not say, 
" Peter, you are a good man ; you mean well, and 
what you say has no doubt an element of truth in 
it." No ! The Lord of love said something very 
different. We are at Csesarea Philippi again. Like 
the disciples, we have been for some time in the 
training-school of the Master. The critical moment 
has come. Much depends upon whether we have 
apprehended that Christ's experience in inaugu- 
rating the atonement involved divine dereliction. 
Still more turns upon our personal attitude to him 
who is the world's hope, because the bearer of 
its sin. When he announces that he is forsaken 
of the Father, shall we straightway say to him? 
" This shall not be ; this is not so." We may fear 
to contradict flatly these words of Christ upon the 
cross, and yet do that which is not so honorable, say- 
ing that what Jesus really meant was : " My God, my 



230 The Living Atonement 

God, why hast thou metaphorically forsaken me?" 
This would not merely tone down the thought of 
the crucified; it would travesty the most sublimely 
serious words that ever fell from the lips of the 
Saviour, and burlesque the death agony of the Son 
of God. He refused to be drugged. Are we thus at 
liberty to drug his words? If Jesus knew clearly 
what he was suffering, he surely knew how to express 
himself accurately concerning it. In his great agony 
it would be unnatural to fix up metaphors to de- 
scribe it. The unstudied ejaculation expressed pre- 
cisely what he felt and realized; or he would not 
have allowed it to escape from his lips. Jesus had, 
in his earthly life, a limitation of knowledge; but 
this limitation did not affect the sphere of his per- 
sonal relations with the Father, His knowledge 
was perfect there; otherwise he could not have 
escaped mistake, doubt, and sin. No one could ever 
be in a position to instruct him as to whether the 
Father had really forsaken him, for no one has 
been in his place, nor known the closeness of divine 
intimacy which he did. 

It does not commend itself as an example of 
fairness to take seriously and at full value all the 
other sayings on the cross, and to discredit the one 
now being discussed. Prof. James S. Candlish 
refers to this as follows : 

In regard to the cry, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" 
I think it must be taken as expressing a truth and not 
merely a feeling wrung from our Saviour by agony, but 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 2$i 

having no reality corresponding to it. That Jesus, even 
for a moment in the darkest hour, had a false and un- 
worthy idea of his Father, and gave open utterance to it, 
seems to me inconsistent with his whole character and 
life, and with his other utterances from the cross. The 
desertion of which he speaks must be something not 
merely fancied, but intensely real. Nor can it be explained 
as simply his abandonment to the power of his enemies. 
If that were so, we should expect the cry to be uttered 
long before, not during the darkness that came over all the 
land. 3 

A more recent utterance on this point is from 
Doctor Mabie. He says: 

True, many efforts have been made to explain away the 
evident force of this cry, saying it is an exaggeration 
due to his peculiar self-consciousness, etc. ; but only at the 
expense of the reliability of the self-consciousness of Jesus 
in his supreme redeeming hour. . . To take the language as 
it stands involves the fewer difficulties. 4 

President Strong, in the new edition of his 
" Systematic Theology," says : 

His cry of agony : " My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me?" was not an ejaculation of thoughtless 
or delirious suffering. It expressed the deepest meaning 
of the crucifixion. . . These explanations make Christ's 
sufferings and Christ's words unreal; and, to our mind, 
they are inconsistent with both his deity and his atone- 
ment. 5 . . If Christ merely supposed himself to be de- 
serted by God, " not only does Christ become an erring 
man and, so far as the predicate deity is applicable to 

3 " Biblical World," Vol. IX, p. 95- 

4 " The Meaning and Message of the Cross,'' p. 68. 

5 " Systematic Theology," Vol. II, p. 742. 



2$2 The Living Atonement 

him, an erring God; but if he cherished unfounded dis- 
trust of God, how can it be possible still to maintain that 
his will was in abiding, perfect agreement and identity 
with the will of God ? " 6 

If divine personality is a reality, there is the 
possibility of fellowship between such persons being 
interfered with as truly as with the human. It is 
not a separation from personal relation which may 
thus take place, but an intervening in fellowship. 

While Jesus died a physical death, the direct 
cause of it was not physical. It is true that he had 
been weakened by suffering and lack of rest; but 
this was not sufficient to account for the exceptional 
swiftness of his death. He had a better body than 
either of the robbers crucified with him. His was 
the only human body that ever had a fair chance ; it 
was the first one tenanted by a sinless soul ; never- 
theless, he died long before his companions in cruci- 
fixion. Unless the forsaking of which Jesus spoke 
was real, there is no sufficient explanation for his 
terrible dread in Gethsemane, and the speedy death 
on Calvary. Was it not that a different cause of 
death other than the crucifixion intervened? We 
are thus shut up either to hallucination or to derelic- 
tion as the primary cause of his death. 

It is then a fact that the experience of the dying 
Son of God was spiritually different from that of 
others put to as painful death as far as the body was 
concerned. Why have the deaths of martyrs been 

6 Ibid., p. 731. 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 233 

so uniformly different from Christ's in respect to the 
sense of God's sustaining presence? If the Father 
had not really withdrawn, why did the perfect Christ 
fail to realize what imperfect men have in death? 
When the first of that long, long line of hero-wit- 
nesses came to his hour of doom, the heavens were 
opened unto him. Why were they against his 
Saviour in his death-hour closed in impenetrable 
gloom? Because the Christ bore a unique relation 
to sin, and consequently to the Father also ; and died 
the unparalleled death. 

III. In a study of the atonement from the personal 
point of view, the first fact of its process with which 
we have to deal is the personal identification of Christ 
with sin by means of the cross. Can we reasonably 
explain how this identifying took place ? The expla- 
nation must be an experiential one. There is the 
difficulty that there is no perfect parallel in our own 
experience. Further, the Scriptures do not work 
out in detail the process referred to. Certain fact? 
are related by eye-witnesses of his death. Dare we 
draw our inferences from them ? We must, though 
in so doing we are perilously near the border line 
of human limitation. Let it be readily acknowledged 
that all the mysterious processes of spiritual ex- 
perience, especially those of divine atonement, can- 
not be explained. 

There are facts in all our lives which must be 
accepted without the explanation of the processes 



234 The Living Atonement 

lying back of them. There were four or five identi- 
fication processes in the development of the savior- 
hood of Jesus. They were identification with human 
nature in the incarnation, with human sin in the 
atonement, with the spiritual state and body in the 
resurrection, with the primeval glory of God in the 
ascension, and with the life and person of the be- 
liever in salvation. It would be unwise to deny the 
fact in any case because the process back of it is 
obscure. We would, on that order of procedure, 
be compelled to deny our own existence. Try as we 
may to explain the process by which even our 
consciousness came into being, it is as great a 
mystery as ever. The process of the personal identi- 
fication of Christ with human sin may be puzzling 
and profound ; yet we are not willing to be kept out 
of this chamber of mystery. If nothing more can 
be done, we would fain peer through the door ajar. 
Let us not pretend to see very far, for the light 
is not the same as if the door were wide open. 
Some day Jesus himself will open the door for us ; 
and we shall then enter and behold what here we 
partly guessed at. Thank God, we do not guess about 
the fact, even though we do guess somewhat about 
the process back of it. The fact itself does not 
depend upon any explanation of these processes. 
The explanation of how Jesus was identified with 
sin on the cross is not wholly indispensable to the 
doctrine of the atonement, just as the explanation 
of how Jesus rose from the dead is not absolutely 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 235 

essential to the doctrine of the resurrection ; yet one 
does feel that any measure of explanation of the 
process in either case would be a welcome accom- 
paniment. 

As to this matter, there are a few suggestions 
which may be offered. They are not by any means 
given as final and complete. The transcendent is 
still so, when we have said all that we may about it. 
First, there was the part which the Father must take 
in the process by which the Son was identified with 
sin. In some measure the former shared in bringing 
to pass all the experiences in the life of the Saviour. 
It was God the Father who determined both the 
nature and the time of all such processes. The 
Word could not have become flesh unless the Father 
had put forth activity to that end. The time and 
method of the incarnation were determined in the 
order of the relations and purposes of God. 

Time in its fulness and space in its vastness are 
both contained in the being of God. He is the au- 
thor of all order and place. The incarnation in some 
measure determined the time and method by which 
Christ should be identified with sin, and was itself 
part of the means. The divine life of the Son, in- 
cluding human life, must enter in order all the 
phases and responsibilities of human experience 
which lay in the path of saviorhood. He did not 
enter the experiences of manhood in childhood. The 
Father did not merely appoint the sin-bearer. He 
" lays upon him the iniquity of us all." As there 



236 The Living Atonement 

was the moment in which God put forth activity in 
the resurrection of Christ, so was there the time in 
which " it pleased the Lord to bruise him " ; and 
then the Saviour-" servant " " was smitten of God 
and afflicted." It was the Father who " made his 
soul an offering for sin." " Him who knew no sin, 
he made sin on our behalf." When the sin of 
humanity became the experience of divinity in the 
person of Christ, the divine Father had a share in 
the activity which made it so. 

There was also the share in this matter which 
the Saviour himself must take. One factor, namely, 
that of Jesus consciousness of the relation which he 
naturally bore to those zvho had sinned, may be men- 
tioned. Suffering always intensifies the conscious- 
ness of kinship. In the crucifixion Jesus would 
realize, as he never had before, his relation to 
humanity and what it involved in sharing the con- 
sciousness of their sin. This consciousness of rela- 
tionship is powerful to identify in proportion as the 
one who exercises it is true to that relation. 

In a home where an only daughter, sixteen years 
old, had been betrayed to shame, the most painful 
agony was that of her mother. Other mothers in 
the city were moving about as happy as ever in the 
sunlight of home. The mother of this poor girl 
lay prone in agony, sobbing out the most awful 
heartache that can come to one human being for 
another. This mother, because of her relation to her 
child, suffered as even her daughter could not. 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 237 

A clergyman was fond of witnessing surgical 
operations. It was not that he was indifferent to 
human pain. As a matter of fact, he was of sympa- 
thetic disposition. The day came when he looked at 
his own child in the hands of the surgeon. This 
father would not have believed that the effect upon 
him could be so different, as compared with other 
operations he had witnessed. In this case the, sur- 
geon's knife taught him more theology in five 
minutes than the best seminary could have in five 
years. He learned by this experience that belonging 
to his own, involved sharing pain as readily as shar- 
ing joy. Realized relationship in the intuition of 
kinship and the consciousness of kind, is powerful 
in experiential identification. In the case of Christ, 
he was moved by the mightiest impulse and bound 
by the closest tie in this; for no human father or 
mother is so near in kind, and as true to relation- 
ship as he. 

Love is also a powerful factor in the process of 
identification. In fact, its very existence is per- 
petuated by this process. Identification is the very 
genius of love. The more powerful and unselfish 
the love, the more complete the identification with 
the loved one in everything. Hosea learned this 
truth. A wondrous, God-given love sent him after 
his unfaithful wife. He brought her out of the 
slavery and degradation into which her sin had sold 
her. He took her back to his heart and home and 
life again. Love identified him with all her shame 



238 The Living Atonement 

and sin; it shared the penalty and the pain with 
her; and it saved her when all else would have 
failed. It was Jesus' love, perfect, powerful, and 
unbounded, which led him to the cross, nailed him 
to our shame, and united him to our sin and its 
consequences. As one has recently expressed it: 

The spot where the fulness of love met the supreme 
virulence of sin must be marked by a cross.* 

Dr. Newman Smyth says : 

Vicariousness belongs also to the integral nature of love. 
It is love's power of putting self through sympathy into 
another's life, of taking another into its own heart. By 
our sympathetic affections we live others' lives, and are 
made happy or suffer pain through our oneness with them. 
This sympathetic faculty of love gives it interpenetrative 
power; by its vicariousness it can enter into alien moods, 
make itself at home in strange experiences, become one in 
spirit with the soul of others. . . Through this vicarious 
power of sympathy with the creation, which is inherent 
in love, the possibility of reconciliation and final harmony 
of life of sinful humanity with the life of God is rendered 
conceivable. The possibility of atonement is involved in 
the creation from the beginning, since love from eternity 
is vicarious as well as self-imparting, a love that wills 
to live in and, if need be, to suffer with, the creation 
which as benevolence it calls forth. 8 

Another element in the process of personal identi- 
fication with sin, is what at first sight might seem 
capable of doing only the opposite. It is the re- 
sponsiveness of the will of Christ to the will of his 

7 Charles Allen Dinsmore, " Atonement in literature and Life," 
p. 209, 

8 " Christian Ethics," p. 230. 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 239 

Father. The plan of the atonement was the plan of 
God, and Jesus knew that it was his Father's will 
that he should die the death for sin. It was not 
merely that the law " numbered him with the trans- 
gressors," for that was by abuse of law. The Deu- 
teronomic code pronounced his body " the curse of 
God " as it hung on the tree, but that was formal 
law, and human conscience may not be able to see the 
ethical ground of its application in this case. To 
Jesus, law was mediated directly from the Father. 
For him the will of his Father, that he should be 
identified with human sin, was known intuitively and 
transmuted instinctively into experience. The will 
of God was the law of his life and experience. The 
processes thereof corresponded exactly with his ap- 
prehension of the divine will. Nothing could be 
more sensitive, responsive, and equational to the will 
of God than was the conscience of the Christ. His 
obedience was as perfect as his love. Under the 
sense of the divine will, Jesus spoke many times 
before and after his death of its divine " oughtness." 
The crucifixion became his experience because the 
cross was in his heart ; and the cross was in his heart 
because the law of God was in his soul. Perfect 
obedience depends upon complete knowledge of the 
perfect will, and perfect will to obey. Experience is 
perfect when in it is the equation of the will of the 
Father. Jesus' experience was as perfect as his 
character. 

Further, sacrifice itself is a principle of identifica- 



240 The Living Atonement 

Hon. It is a central religious and social principle 
with men because it is central in the nature of God, 
and also in his relation to all created things. Its per- 
fected processes are hidden in the deeps of divine 
existence; but something of it may be understood 
from known human and divine relations. From the 
first, man himself has been sacrificing both in work 
and worship. This was done daily at the call of 
human needs, and instinctively in religion to put the 
soul en rapport with the nature and life of God. 
For this reason sacrifice has always been the experi- 
ential dynamic of religious life. Whether in religion 
or in the social relations sacrifice is essentially a 
principle of identification. 

There is also the psychological principle in the 
process of experiential identification. In its working, 
the mind and soul of one assume for another, get 
under his load, and undertake for it. Imagination, 
one of the most realistic powers of the soul, puts the 
person to whom it belongs in the place of the other. 
In psychological identification all the powers of the 
soul are intuitively placed at the disposal of the soul 
and circumstances of another. 

This brings us to the point where it may be ob- 
served that all the foregoing are not sufficient to 
explain why the identification with sin took place 
on the cross. Jesus knew before the crucifixion of 
the relation which he bore to humanity. He did not 
begin to love when he began to bleed. His respon- 
siveness to the will of God, and his sacrificial powers, 



The Identification of Christ with Sin 241 

did not begin their exercise for the first when he was 
crucified. In what way did Jesus then identify him- 
self with human sin as he had not before? This is 
the crucial point. 

Was it not by the very act of submission to the sin 
of his crucifixion f Was it not in making the cruci- 
fixion possible by surrendering his body to the 
murderous will of sin? Did he not thereby prac- 
tically assent to sin ? This cannot fairly be called sin- 
ning, for the reason of his consent was as clean as 
the unsmirched whiteness and purity of the holiness 
of God. This is the unique case of sinless assent 
to sin ; but the sin was no less sin in all its sinfulness 
because he sinlessly assented to it. The personal 
identification with sin was none the less actual be- 
cause he sinlessly gave himself over into the hands 
of sin, to do with his body what it wished. 

There is absolutely no escape from the conclusion 
that the crucifixion could not have taken place with- 
out Christ's consent. There is also the fact that in 
it he took an unprecedented attitude to sin. Infal- 
libly, before, he had frustrated its murderous designs 
upon himself. Now he surrenders his body to the 
death at its hands. He could not, it seems, save 
from sin without assenting to sin. He could not be 
identified with sin in reality, except by consent to 
some sin in actuality. His permission of it opened 
the door of his experience to the entrance of the 
whole realm and full results of sin. " He saved 
others ; himself he could not save." To permit this 
Q 



242 The Living Atonement 

sin that he may remit sin in atonement, may seem 
at first sight contradictory. This identified him with 
but one sin. That was sufficient. What identified 
him with one sin identified him with all. In every 
case, consent to one sin is assent to the power of all 
sin. Jesus did not need to be born of every mother 
in order to be identified with humanity. He did not 
have to lie in every grave to be identified with the 
dead and buried. He did not need to consent to 
every sin in order to be identified with all sin. 

Sin is such a perfect solidarity that Jesus' identi- 
fication with it all was perfect. There never has 
been a sin which was not in quality and essence the 
same as that to which the Lord was related by his 
crucifixion; but in this sin the vileness of all sin 
seemed concentrated. It was the masterpiece and 
crown of all sinning. The crime of the crucifixion 
summed up in itself the utmost sinfulness of sin. 

Contact with one such sin as this was contact with 
all the universe of iniquity. On the soul of Christ, 
the whole weight of the world's sin rested because of 
this contact. Through his crucifixion there entered 
into his experience the whole power and effect of 
iniquity. The cross was the rift through which 
there poured into the chamber of his soul the fumes 
of the pit. Through this inlet came the inrush of 
death itself to feed its hunger : 

Death 
Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear 
His famine should be filled. 



XV 

THE DIVINE EXPERIENCE 
IN ATONEMENT 



If Christ had done less than die for us, therefore — if he 
had separated himself from us, or declined to be one with 
us, in the solemn experience in which the darkness of 
sin is sounded and all its bitterness tasted — there would 
have been no atonement. It is impossible to say this 
of any particular incident of his life, and in so far the 
unique emphasis laid on his death in the New Testament 
is justified. But I should go further than this, and say 
that even Christ's life, taking it as it stands in the Gospels, 
only enters into the atonement, and has reconciling power, 
because it is pervaded from beginning to end by the con- 
sciousness of his death. . . His life is part of his death; 
a deliberate and conscious descent, ever deeper and deeper, 
into the dark valley where at the last hour the last reality 
of sin was to be met and borne. And if the objection is 
made that, after all, this only means that death is the most 
vital point of life, its intensest focus, I should not wish 
to make any reply. Our Lord's passion is his sublimest 
action — an action so potent that all his other actions are 
sublimated in it, and we know everything when we know 
that he died for our sins. 

— Prof. James Denney, D. D. 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

THE DIVINE EXPERIENCE IN ATONEMENT 

Man planned the death by the cross; God planned 
the death which took place on the cross. This does 
not mean that the death of the Son was in itself de- 
sirable to the Father. God plans, not according to his 
own feelings, but according to the ethical situation. 
He does not abandon the world because sin is in it. 
To plan for the good of the world he must of neces- 
sity plan about the plans of sin. When Joseph's 
brothers, in treacherous inhumanity, sold him into 
Egypt, God did not refuse to turn the evil deed to 
purposes of good. When the Jews determined upon 
the death of their Messiah, God did not refuse to 
have anything further to do with the matter. There 
was then all the more need for God so to plan that 
their detestable sin should completely outwit itself. 
To say that in such a world as this, God could 
not prevent the death of his Son, is to contradict 
flatly the teaching of Ghrist on this matter all 
through his life, and even at the very moment of his 
arrest True, the death of Christ was the greatest 
crime in history ; but it was not thereby beyond the 
Father's power of prevention. Had it not been that 
he intended to make this death the greatest power 

245 



246 The Living Atonement 

to save from all the crimes of sin, he would have 
prevented it. In the divine plan of the atonement 
there was included and overruled the plans of sin. 
God was justified in that the means he used was 
unavoidable. The physician could become the cure 
only by allowing the disease to come upon himself. 
Here we meet with that which is found everywhere 
in life on earth, the inseparable intertwisting in the 
workings of good and evil. 

Jesus himself never took the attitude that he was 
at the mercy of sin and of sinful men. He con- 
sistently taught that his death was the will and plan 
of the Father. To him the plan of the atonement 
was not any the less the plan of God, because it took 
into account what sin would do with him when it 
was unhindered. Only in the struggle in Geth- 
semane was there any suggestion that Christ 
thought of his own will in the matter ; and thereby 
he really enhanced the glory of his faith in his 
Father, in that he showed it was not tainted with 
fatalism. The pathos of that struggle would be 
made pointless and ludicrous on any other view 
than that the Saviour believed that the Father had 
appointed " the cup." His prayer of triumphant 
submission, " nevertheless not my will, but thine 
be done," was not an empty delusion. Jesus said 
long before that hour of struggle : " Therefore doth 
the Father love me because I lay down my life. No 
one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down 
myself." 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 247 

I. The experience of God the Father and the Son 
during the crucifixion was characterized by a strange 
and painful interference with their fellowship. The 
disturbance of his relations with the Father was the 
sure sign that the Son's identification with sin was 
real. The withdrawal of the Father's presence is 
everywhere the infallible indication of the presence 
of sin. There is absolutely no other reason for this 
withdrawal which may be given. There can be no 
real and satisfactory explanation of the bitter nature 
of the Saviour's suffering, other than an actual 
change of attitude on the part of the Father. 

A constant presence of sin was manifest about the 
Lord during his lifetime. As an external presence 
it entered his experience from day to day; but on 
the cross it entered in an entirely different way. 
Hitherto the ocean waves of iniquity beat vainly 
around this solitary island of sinless personality. 
Now a flood overwhelms him. Formerly the flames 
of sin threw their baneful glare and foul wreaths of 
smoke only into the atmosphere which the Christ 
breathed. Now the home of the Christ-soul has the 
dread fire in conflagration within. No wonder that 
darkness covered the face of the land, for this was 
but the outward symbol of the darkness within the 
experience of the suffering Son of God. 

On the cross for the first time sin affected the 
Son's sense of joy in the Father's presence. At 
Calvary no angel comes to succor as at Gethsemane. 
Lying prone beneath the olives in an agony of 



248 The Living Atonement 

sweat and blood, " the suffering Saviour prayed 
alone," only so far as men were concerned: 

'T is midnight; and for others' guilt 
The Man of sorrows weeps in blood; 

Yet he who hath in anguish knelt, 
Is not forsaken by his God. 

God is neither cruel nor arbitrary. Had not 
Jesus' identification with sin and the personal na- 
ture of the atonement made it impossible, God 
would have made his Son's death a glorious triumph 
of his sustaining presence. This he has done for 
countless thousands who, to say the least, were not 
more to him than his " Only Begotten." This 
change in treatment is explained only by the truth 
which lies at the heart of the atonement : " Him 
who knew no sin he made sin on our behalf." 

The process of becoming the atonement began 
when Jesus Christ was so made one with sin, that it 
consciously affected his relation to his Father. In 
the crucifixion the contest with sin was carried up 
above the human plane to be fought out in the 
higher relationship of the Father and the Son. Sin 
had its wonted effect even there ; but the most that 
it could do was to interfere temporarily with that 
relation till death resulted. The battle with sin 
never could have raged up from the lowlands of 
human experience to that summit of heavenly 
height, but for Christ's twofold identification with 
humanity and iniquity. Wherever it is, sin is sin. 
It was not any kinder to Christ than it is to us. 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 249 

Nay, it could be all the more cruelly torturing and 
murderous to him, because of what it found him to 
be. It was its wonted effect that killed him. 

What was the experience of the Father during 
the atonement ? It could not be other than suffering 
unparalleled. Never had sin brought such agony 
to him as now. Never did it bear so excruciatingly 
painful relation as when " The Only Begotten " 
was nailed to the tree. It was all the harder in that 
he himself had permitted, yea, must permit sin so 
to do, in order to save the sons of men. The Father 
was not a divine Shylock, a demon deified, inflicting 
excruciating penalty, and drinking deep satisfaction 
from the resulting agony. If he were that, it would 
not have been such keen pain to the Christ to be 
separated from him. It was because the Father is 
the personification of perfect goodness, sympathy, 
and love that the Son's separation from him caused 
such immeasurable sorrow to both. 

Of course, there was satisfaction to the Father 
in the pain which his Son and he himself were en- 
during; but suffering rather than satisfaction was 
uppermost in his experience. There was satisfac- 
tion that the redemption of man was being pur- 
chased, the righting of the wrong of sin instituted, 
and the salvation of man wrought out. There was 
penalty borne in the atonement. It could not be 
otherwise. It was not imposed mechanically and 
arbitrarily. Sin inflicted it as it never could before. 
It was the awful price which God must pay to de- 



250 The Living Atonement 

stroy it and right its wrong. Part of the penalty 
of sin always falls on the Father. The heavier end 
of the suffering rests on him rather than on us. 
There is so much more of him to sutler, and so 
much finer sensitiveness to the effect of sin. 

The unavoidable separation from the Christ 
caused pain to the Father during the crucifixion. 
It was the anguish of his heart that from his well- 
beloved Son in the throes of agony, he must with- 
draw his presence. By the abuse of civic health 
regulations, a child was taken from his bed when 
at the worst in sickness from diphtheria, forced 
from his home to an isolated hospital. The health 
officer, having forgotten to notify the hospital of 
his coming, the child was compelled to stand at the 
hospital door in a bleak and bitterly cold wind while 
neglected red-tape formalities were attended to. As 
a result, he took cold, and his neck soon swelled up 
to frightful proportions ; and suppuration set in. 
What think you were the feelings of the father 
of the child, as from time to time he stood outside 
that hospital, looking up at the silent, bare, second- 
story windows of the ward where his loved one was 
suffering? With choking throat and aching heart 
often did he turn away, and return home to look 
into the empty cot. Another little child forced in 
the same way from home, fretted night and day till 
she died. The mother, in poor health at the time, 
could not bear the agony of separation from her sick 
child; and she also passed away. Think you that 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 251 

an earthly father, or mother, has more feeling for a 
sick child than the heavenly Father had for his 
crucified Son? 

If theologians had more schooling in the seminary 
of parental suffering, they would not attribute such 
horrible passion to God as gloating over the pain 
and misery of the dearest. No ! The Father's sepa- 
ration from the suffering Son was an agony which 
knew no limit. Heaven was a place of gloom that 
day, and the saddest spot in the whole universe was 
the great, throbbing, sobbing heart of the Father 
in heaven. With Jesus there was too much suffering 
for sadness only. The pain in the throat of the 
child sick with diphtheria is different from the pain 
in the throat of the sympathetic, suffering mother. 
Somewhat in that way did the sufferings of the Son 
differ from those of the Father. 

The withdrawal of the Father's presence from 
the sin-bearing Son was anything but arbitrary. In 
part it was but the other side of the incapacitation 
of the Son for communion with the Father by reason 
of his real identification with sin and the moral 
distance which thereby had come in between them. 
This disqualification was experientially actual. Of 
course, God could not hold fellowship with that 
which destroyed the very sense of his presence. It 
was an utter impossibility for the Father to hold 
the least degree of communion with sin even 
when in the atoning experience of his Son. Sin is 
never anything but sin to God ; and the Father must 



252 The Living Atonement 

treat sin as sin, no matter what pain thereby came 
to himself and to his Son. 

But once Immanuel's orphan cry the universe has shaken, 
It went up echoless, alone, 4 ' O God, I am forsaken! " 
It went up from the heart of Christ amidst his lost crea- 
tion, 
That at last no child of his should use those words of 
desolation. 

II. No tongue on earth can fully describe the suf- 
ferings of Christ during the agony of being made 
the personal atonement for sin. We would have 
to know how much God the Father was to Jesus 
Christ, his Son, before we could know in full the 
measure of their pain. When we could tell all that 
the presence of the Father and of the Son meant 
to each other, then could we reasonably attempt to 
describe completely their suffering from separation. 
Perfect communion, unlimited fellowship, and di- 
vinely loving intercourse which had run on for un- 
numbered ages, knowing no interference, now sud- 
denly felt the shock and break of interruption. If 
every swift-revolving planet in the heavens had sud- 
denly come to a standstill, the jolt would not have 
been so great. How often has it happened that 
after many happy years of wedded life the surviv- 
ing husband or wife could not stand the shock of 
separation at death. When a bond of relationship 
as much greater than that as the earth is greater 
than a grain of sand, was in a moment rent 
asunder, no wonder that the agony of death ensued. 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 253 

When such ties of fellowship were snapped under 
the world's weight of sin, the quivering body nailed 
to the tree could not stand the resultant reaction 
from the shock to the soul; and the immeasurable 
spiritual strain recorded itself in death tremors. 

Sin torpifies human sensibilities. It was differ- 
ent in some respects with Jesus. Not having com- 
mitted the sin which he bore, he was not benumbed 
into unsensitiveness to its effect. He refused to be 
drugged and to have escape from the physical part 
of his agony that would naturally accompany the 
spirtual. He was so perfectly good, so completely 
free from callousness, that sin had in all the ages 
its choicest opportunity to torture. The closer it 
came to him, the greater the suffering from his ab- 
horrence of it. The closer the contact with its 
indescribable loathsomeness, the more painful the 
repugnance which his nature felt toward it. In 
startled dread his soul battled with the foul fumes 
of the pit, which rose all around him. Nailed to the 
tree, there was no escape for him from the vile 
vapors of death encircling him. As Charles Dins- 
more describes it: 

He tasted sin's utter godlessness. A black cloud drifted 
up from the abyss, and as the dripping gloom encompassed 
him, he "tasted death for every man." The bitterness 
of the cup which the Father would not take from the lips 
of his Son, was not the pains of death, it was the con- 
sciousness of the sin of the world — a perception of what 
sin meant to God, and of what it is in its essential nature. 1 

1 " Atonement in Literature and Life," p. 203. 



254 The Living Atonement 

The battle of the atonement on the field of Christ's 
experience was necessarily an irrepressible and 
truceless contest. It was the decisive cosmic issue 
between the forces of evil and the " Captain of our 
salvation." Upon his head broke the full fury of 
the storm of battle. The conflict between the mutiny 
of sin and the loyalty of the Son was now to be 
fought out unto death. Either sin would destroy 
him or he would destroy it. It could be no drawn 
battle ; it was a fight to the death. 

When ruined by sin we are willing to live the life- 
less life. We are willing to live without God. Not 
so with Jesus. The ardor of his loyalty to God was 
not so easily cooled, nor his devotion so readily ob- 
literated. In the atonement there was a struggle be- 
tween Jesus' God-affinity and sin's God-detractive- 
ness. Sin could not be met by God except in per- 
son, and it could not be met in person except on 
the field of experience. It could not be destroyed 
in its utmost, combined strength, except by an 
experience intrinsically sin-destructive and sin- 
reparative. The backbone of sin's resistance must 
be broken by him who was structurally stronger. 
The Herculean thews, unyielding in resistance to 
iniquity, were the unconquerables, Christ's faith in 
and love for the Father. 

Despite the immeasurable agony which Jesus was 
suffering in body from the crucifixion, and also in 
soul from the withdrawal of the Father's presence, 
he loved him none the less ; nor did his faith in him 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 255 

abate one jot. The very strength of his faith and 
love added to the keenness of his pain. It was the 
height of his confidence and the altitude of his affec- 
tion which were responsible for the depth of the 
misery into which he sank. The Father's face he 
could no longer see. For the first time he called 
him " God." Even though he was more distant God 
than present Father, the loyal heart of the loving 
Son yearned for him none the less. Though sinking 
physically, weighed down spiritually under the 
leaden load of sin, surrounded by fires of torture, 
his loyalty rose heavenward like some granite spire 
in the midst of a city of flames. With tremulous 
tones and in piteous pathos did he call after the 
vanished Father. Vainly did his eyes search the 
darkened heavens for the vision of the face of 
Father-love. Dense clouds rolled across the blue. 
A total eclipse smote his horizon with Stygian dark- 
ness. The pall of death hung over him. The lone- 
liest of deaths closed in upon him. 

Jesus prayed. That was because his faith in the 
Father was still unbroken. His confidence in him 
who ever before had heard and answered, is kept 
still unsullied. Sin could not master that. Of him 
the author of Hebrews wrote : 

Who in the days of his flesh having offered up prayers 
and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him 
that was able to save him out of death and, having been 
heard for his godly fear, though he was a Son, yet 
learned obedience by the things which he suffered ; and, 



256 The Living Atonement 

having been made perfect, he became the author (cause) 
of eternal salvation. 2 For it became him for whom are 
all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the 
author of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 3 

Though the situation in which Jesus was placed 
was one of intolerable misery, he did not wish to 
relieve himself by escape. His body might fail; 
his soul would never yield. He was on the death- 
rack between the withdrawal of the Father's pres- 
ence and the powerful pull of sin's detractiveness. 
In the mill of experience, he was being ground be- 
tween the upper and nether millstones of death; on 
the one hand the feeling of divine dereliction, and 
on the other of soul-revulsion toward sin. God, 
who had withdrawn, was so much to him that he 
could not bear to live without him. Sin, which had 
come to him, was such a loathsome putrescence, 
such a fetid deadliness, that its presence within his 
soul and consciousness made life impossible. His 
unquenchable antipathy to iniquity and his undying 
disgust with it, made him willing to die, rather than 
in the least allow it. It was the strength of his 
goodness that made sin such sure death to him. 
In the very purity of his character was the cer- 
tainty of his death. 

III. Jesus died on the cross, not by it. He would 
have died anywhere with such agony of mind and 
suffering of soul. It was not the crucifixion that 

2 Heb. 5 : 7-9. 3 Heb. 2 : 10. 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 257 

caused the death of our Lord. It was another suf- 
fering that killed him long before the cross could 
finish its wonted work of death. In the race to the 
portals of the grave the swifter agony of sin-bearing 
outran the slow-footed tortures of crucifixion. It 
was the strain of spiritual suffering, reacting upon 
his body, that snapped the thread of life. Yet, in 
proportion as the cross shared in identifying Christ 
with sin, it shared in causing his death. 

How sin outwitted itself by putting Jesus to death ! 
In his death, not only did the chance of final victory 
forever slip away from it, but by it a throne of glory 
was prepared for him who came to destroy it. 
Through this victory Christ would forever reign as 
vanquisher of iniquity. The hour and the power of 
darkness failed to put out the Light of the world. 
Sin lost its throne in the attempt to master the 
spirit of the Son of God, and to destroy the divine 
Sonship. 

Jesus resisted to the end ; he mastered sin at every 
point. He won a victory that in its nature must 
spread itself out in ever-widening circles, until the 
utmost borders of human life are reached. He 
met within his soul and defeated there the inner- 
most strength of iniquity. He unmistakably demon- 
strated his power to destroy sin in its utmost energy 
and right its wrong. Carried, a willing prisoner, 
into the central citadel of sin, instead of being im- 
prisoned therein, he makes that strategic center his 
throne and unique place of power. The key position 



258 The Living Atonement 

of sin's fortifications was thereby transformed into 
an impregnable fortress of God, a place of refuge 
for all mankind. 

He hell in hell laid low, 
And Satan's throne o'erthrew, 

Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so, 
And death by dying slew. 

Jesus died. Sin seemed to have triumphed. Hell 
appeared to reign. What seemed the execution of 
the royal prisoner turned out to be the execution 
of the executioner, and the destruction of the de- 
stroyer. The ending of the best life on earth was 
its beginning in unlimited power, infinite enlarge- 
ment, and unending permanence. In Jesus' death, 
death died; and spiritual captivity was taken cap- 
tive. It was as Micah prophesied : " He will sub- 
due our iniquities " ; and as Paul announced : " He 
is able to subject all things unto himself." 

Jesus knew when the end had come. He felt the 
break in the life of his body. Was it not heart- 
break? There is good evidence that it was. He 
cried, " It is finished." He was then given unto the 
farthest limit of life and death ; no part of his being 
was left out in the personal sacrifice. In entire per- 
sonality he was then wholly surrendered unto atone- 
ment for sin. The wrong of his own crucifixion was 
thereby turned into a righteousness. The battle of 
the atonement turned on that point. As by one sin 
he was identified zvith all sin, so in overcoming the 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 259 

sin of his crucifixion and transforming it into a 
power of righteousness, he overcame all sin and 
became the atonement for it all. The offense and 
wrong of sin were thus made right in him. 

Since in the experience of the dying Saviour were 
focused all the virulence, pain, guilt, and desert of 
sin on the one hand, and the ethical merit, the spirit- 
ual virtue, and the atoning vitality of a divine per- 
son on the other, perfect atonement was accom- 
plished. The death which perfected Christ as ato- 
ning Saviour, being due to inoculation with the virus 
of sin, there resulted not only a life immune to in- 
iquity, but also the universal antidote to sin. Never 
more could sin directly oppose the Christ. 

Death in releasing Christ from the body nailed to 
the tree, freed him from the identification with sin, 
and its resultant spiritual disability. The agony 
of separation from the Father released him into 
the fellowship which was his very life. Passing 
through the gates of spiritual and physical death, he 
conquered death and vanquished the separation of 
sin. The flood of sin's power, which had been 
sweeping over the Christ, at last subsided. It fell 
back from his divine personality as a retreating tide 
from an adamantine shore. Then was laid bare the 
impregnable foundation of the Rock of Ages. Then 
was the Rock of Ages made the corner-stone of the 
world's righteousness. 

The Son's native affinity for the Father burst in 
death the bands of sin's separation. Christ is the only 



260 The Living Atonement 

one who has mastered sin by bearing its penalty, 
and suffering to the full its natural and legitimate 
consequences. Here is a person who, having passed 
through the experience of death because of sin, en- 
tered the presence of God at once with acceptance. 
This announced his person constituted forever the 
means of access for sinners into the presence of 
God. The death on Calvary was not merely God's 
declaration that the problem of the atonement for 
sin has its full solution in the person of Christ; it 
was the means by which the Christ became the 
atonement, even as the incarnation was the means 
by which he became man. The Babe of Bethlehem 
interprets the significance of his birth, rather than 
that his birth interprets the God-child. The Christ 
is the interpretation of his death, rather than that 
his death is the interpretation of him. We are sure 
that Jesus is the resurrection because he arose from 
the dead, and ever since has made the dead to live. 
We know that the Son of God is the atonement 
for sin, because he died when there was no other 
reason for his death but this — to right the wrong of 
sin, and also because he has ever since been the 
power of the world's righteousness. The person 
transcends the event ; but he is evermore something 
other than he was, because of the event of his 
death. We know the meaning of the event through 
knowing in experience the power of the person 
who passed through that event; and yet how little 
we know, compared with what lies beyond. 



The Divine Experience in Atonement 261 

I have aspired to know the might of God, 
As if the story of his love was furled, 

Nor sacred foot the grasses e'er had trod 
Of this redeemed world; 

Have sunk my thoughts as lead into the deep, 
To grope for that abyss whence evil grew, 

And spirits of ill, with eyes that cannot weep, 
Hungry and desolate flew; 



As if their legions did not one day crowd 

The death-pangs of the conquering good to see 

As if a sacred head had never bowed 
In death for man — for me! 



XVI 

THE RESURRECTION AND THE 
ATONEMENT 



Who deems the Saviour dead? 
And yet he bowed his head, 

And while in sudden night the sun retired, 
And through thick darkness hurled, 
Reeled on the shuddering world, 

The mighty Son of God in blood expired. 

Expired; but in the gloom 
And silence of the tomb, 

Death's mystery unveiled to mortal sight: 
Triumphant o'er his foes, 
A conqueror he rose, 
And from the grave commanded life 
and light! 

— Francis de Haes Janvier. 



The Christian scheme of salvation through incarnate God 
is the world's center of gravity, toward which everything 
tends; its own center of gravity is the cross; for it is 
not " Christ " simply, but " Christ crucified," whom we 
preach. Not the person constituted by pure birth of 
Mary is the power of God unto salvation, but that person 
as offered, slain, and raised again. 

— Rev. J. Oswald Dykes, D. D. 



CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

THE RESURRECTION AND THE ATONEMENT 

The atonement and the resurrection are two great 
central doctrines of Christianity. They are comple- 
mentary, the one to the other. Neither of them 
would have place and power without the other. But 
for the resurrection the atonement would have been 
ineffective. But for the atonement the resurrection 
would have been as empty as the tomb which the 
Saviour left. It is in order, therefore, to give some 
place to the relation which the resurrection bears to 
the redemptive and mediatorial work of Jesus Christ. 

I. There is more in the physical part of our nature 
than is yet known to us. In this important field of 
investigation science has been reaching on to the dis- 
covery of fact after fact ; and the end is not yet. 
The resurrection of Christ teaches us that the physi- 
cal is essential to human wholeness; otherwise his 
rising from the dead were an impertinent superfluity. 
Too often the body has been looked upon as non- 
essential and a curse. Such a view is based on the 
utterly unworthy theory of the material origin of sin 
and the natural degradation of matter. Whatever 
the share our bodies have in sin, we are not complete 

265 



266 The Living Atonement 

without them. We were not made to exist as spirits. 
Even a disembodied soul is intrinsically unlike a 
spirit, and is neither complete nor content out of 
touch with the material universe. The disembodied 
soul is an incompletion and a yearning, crying, 
" How long, O Lord, how long? " 

Ethics involves the dualism of right and wrong. 
Somewhat in the same way human nature involves 
the dualism of matter and spirit. Monism in either 
case means death. The spiritual monist contradicts 
his theory every minute in practice. He thinks he is 
an orthodox spiritist, whereas to live at all he must 
be a chronic backslider. In experience he is a 
realist ; hunger makes him a materialist ; and in busi- 
ness he has never been known to take the idea of 
money in payment of a debt. 

Idealism and realism are described as conflicting 
systems of thought ; yet there is truth in both. They 
are opposing views only when either is claimed to 
have the point of view from which all truth may be 
seen. This is opposition of claim, not of substance. 
Monism is also set over against dualism; but they 
are only different aspects of the same thing. In all 
monism of sphere, for example, there is the dualism 
of essential opposites within the sphere. It is not 
in the interests of monism to deny this dualism. 

To doubt the existence of hot or cold, is to deny 
temperature; to deny the bitter or the sweet, is to 
deny taste; to disbelieve that there is either sound 
or silence, is to doubt hearing; to object to the 



The Resurrection and the Atonement 267 

reality of light and darkness, is to deny sight; to 
deny the existence of right and wrong, is to blot 
out the moral universe ; to doubt the reality of mat- 
ter and spirit, is to doubt the reality of human ex- 
perience. Christian Science admits the necessity of 
dualism in its own system, viz., the dualism of the 
real and the unreal, of the mortal mind and the 
spiritual mind, of truth and error. It is inconsistent 
to admit this dualism in one place and to deny it 
in another. To the man who is blind, darkness and 
light are not opposite ; but that is because he is blind. 
To the deaf person, sound is not opposite to silence ; 
but that is because he is deaf. The man who claims 
that to him there is neither right nor wrong, matter 
nor spirit, is really claiming to be dead in moral 
sense, and in ordinary powers of discrimination. 
When a man is dead to moral sense, he goes to 
prison ; when dead to matter, to the cemetery. Any 
system which proceeds to destroy such powers of 
human experience works in the interest of death, 
even though it may deny the existence of death and 
the dualism of life and death. 

The great bulk of human experience is made up 
of attention of one kind or another to the physical. 
For the very language with which we discuss spirit- 
ual things, we must fall back on terms which are 
born out of our relation to the physical. In fact, our 
language is a necessity which grows out of the alli- 
ance of body and spirit in one being. Underneath 
the two is the monism which makes this possible. 



268 The Living Atonement 

How comes it that the physical, holding so large a 
place in the service of the spiritual, must, to serve it 
better, be counted an unreality ? How is it that we 
cannot have experience at all, except by practical 
acknowledgment of the reality of the body every 
moment we live? Why is it that in order to live, 
we must thus accept the unreal as real, the shadow 
as substance, the false as true? How could a good 
God so frame human experience that to have exist- 
ence, it must be a living lie ? 

There is a task in this connection which those who 
call themselves " Scientists," should perform. Let 
them explain how it comes to be a law that every one 
who unites the two unrealities of bread and body, 
has the real experience of satisfaction. Surely, twice 
nothing is something, according to illusion arithme- 
tic. Call the satisfaction an illusion, it is nevertheless 
a reality as experience. Illusion, in the sense that 
there is no experience, is an impossibility. Illusion is 
but the name of a kind of experience. Classifying an 
experience as an illusion does not put its reality out 
of existence any more than classifying a horse as a 
quadruped puts the horse out of existence. The mere 
classification of experience as illusion does not 
make it illusion. A lion, classified as a donkey, does 
not begin to bray. These scientists must show the 
basis of their classification. When they do so, it is 
at once seen that they have no basis other than that 
of arbitrary denial. This denial would as logically 
apply to experience in general, and would as rigidly 



The Resurrection and the Atonement 269 

involve that all experience is alike illusion. What 
takes away the trustworthiness of one of our 
powers, takes away the trustworthiness of them all. 
If one of the faculties which God has given us, is 
not to be trusted, how can we trust God in other 
of his gifts? 

In logic we do not stop when half-way to the con- 
clusion. Having denied the physical, we must also 
deny the rational. Having discredited the distinction 
between matter and spirit, we must go on to the 
denial of the distinction between right and wrong. 
Strange to say, the latter is done and the reality of 
reason glorified. The explanation is : this idealism is 
born of a rationalism, rather than of the moral na- 
ture, and therefore must own its birth. When wrong 
is said to be impossible and sin an unreality, we have 
really said that goodness and righteousness are im- 
possible, and that the moral and religious natures are 
superfluous or unreal. The distinction between 
right and wrong, and between matter and spirit 
must stand or fall together. Belief in the reality of 
the moral, the spiritual, and the physical, is abso- 
lutely essential to belief in the reality of experience 
itself, which is the foundation faith. To doubt this 
basic reality of experience itself, leaves no standing- 
ground for all other realities. Then the main work 
of Christ in salvation must also be unreal. Every 
system which denies the reality of sin and Christ's 
deliverance therefrom, is headed toward the destruc- 
tion of our faith in the Lord. That which would 



270 The Living Atonement 

reduce the saviorhood of Christ to the realm of 
deliverance from illusions, is itself the consummate 
illusion. 

Faith is the foundation of all philosophy and sci- 
ence, and as truly also of all religion. Doubt of the 
reality of right and wrong, and of matter and spirit, 
is a negative faith which on its positive side is so 
small that it has no room for faith in the reality of 
experience itself. It matters little to us what is real, 
if our experience is not. It does not matter what a 
man has faith in as the foundation of his philosophy, 
if it leaves out faith in his own powers of discrim- 
ination and in the involved reality of his experience. 
He has then no place in which to store his faith ; and 
his feet are forever in the air. 

" Hardly any person," says Bishop Brooks, " has 
ventured to praise doubt as the resting place or 
floating place of the human spirit." Of all doubt, 
the most treacherous is that of the reality of our 
faculties and experience. Here are two systems of 
Christian Science and Christianity, the former say- 
ing find peace by doubting the discriminations of the 
moral sense and the reality of the physical, and the 
latter, find peace by meeting in Christ the demands 
of the moral sense, and " presenting your bodies a 
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is 
your reasonable service." 

It is sometimes said that it is between appear- 
ances and not between substances that we dis- 
tinguish, and that matter and spirit, and right and 



The Resurrection and the Atonement 271 

wrong are relatively real to us. This is pure jug- 
gling with the terms " real " and " relative." There 
can be no relative of a non-existing absolute. A 
thing is never relatively real. " Relatively real," is 
a pure contradiction in terms. Reality is the abso- 
lute. It is the apprehension of this absolute that 
is relative. Absolute apprehension is possible, of 
course, only to the absolute God. Relative right 
and relative physical imply the existence of the 
absolute of both, or they are not relatives. The 
absolute would not be absolute if it depended upon 
us for the reality of its existence. The person to 
whom right and matter are said to be relatively real, 
cannot be considered as the absolute of either; nor 
can his powers constitute or create the absolute. It 
is not a commendable process of reasoning which 
asserts the relative while denying the absolute, or 
admitting the absolute, makes it in essence relative. 
As to appearances as distinguished from the 
reality of things in themselves, it may be said that 
appearances are not all subjective projection, other- 
wise they would not be appearances. The noumena 
are back of the phenomena ; they differentiate the 
latter, and are known in them. The simpler the 
noumena, the less subjective projection takes place 
in the process of apprehension. The more complex 
and exalted the objects of apprehension, the more 
room is possible for the subjective to objectify itself 
in them; but the noumena would cease to be phe- 
nomena and become mere phantasms the instant the 



2J2 The Living Atonement 

objective became wholly subjective projection. It 
is an evidence of education to be able to distinguish 
between our subjective projection and the real 
objective. 

What body and soul are in ultimate, we need not 
question. Something in the natures of the two ulti- 
mates causes the difference which registers itself 
in apprehension and experience. There is no theory 
of spirit parallel to the kinetic theory of matter, 
which gives us motion and yet nothing to move. If 
there were, and the soul could be thought of as a 
whirl of thinking and feeling, with nothing to think 
or feel, we could resolve both soul and body into 
a monistic flux to explain the unity of human being. 

What the resurrection body is we do not know. 
We have not had a chance to know. In the very 
nature of the case it is a form of matter with which 
we are not familiar. Let us not mistake our 
ignorance for its non-existence and call the pro- 
cedure science. There is now no reasonable doubt 
that there may be many forms of matter which are 
as yet undiscovered. It is but a few years ago that 
if some one had then said that a form of matter 
could exist with the properties which it is now 
known that radium has, the assertion would have 
been drowned in incredulous laughter. It is bet- 
ter to play the fool in laughing rather than in weep- 
ing. It would be better still not to play it at all. We 
are not to be blamed for some of our ignorance 
about the physical realm, but for our trading on it. 



The Resurrection and the Atonement 273 

Not long ago we would have flouted the possibility 
of sending wireless messages across the heaving 
waste of Atlantic waters, rather than through them. 
The wireless call to the rescue of the passengers on 
wrecked steamers, if told a quarter of a century ago, 
would have then seemed a pure dream from fairy- 
land. What possibilities lie in what we call the 
ether ! Who can guess the number of undiscovered 
possibilities in the physical realm? Must we not 
admit that the physical shades off into the spiritual 
and no man can draw the line between the two 
realms? How many marvels swing out in the vast 
beyond of the material world as well as in the 
spiritual universe! Recently there has flashed in 
upon us the revelation of a few more of the won- 
drous powers and possibilities in the physical realm. 
In the possession of the labyrinths of modern physi- 
cal appliances, is it not entirely out of the current 
of the world's progress, and into a muddy side eddy 
to decry matter, doubt its existence, or limit its pos- 
sibilities to the little we yet know of them? 

II. To spiritualize the resurrection of Christ, in 
order to avoid difficulties arising from the limi- 
tation of our knowledge of the physical realm, is as 
unwarranted as to spiritualize his birth and death. 
When in one of the most widely circulated publi- 
cations on the continent, a Christmas article a year 
or two ago soberly set forth that Jesus was born, not 
of Mary's body, but of her idea, we have in it pre- 
s 



274 The Living Atonement 

cisely the same type of interpretation as that of 
the theologians -who teach man's rising from the 
dead while the body remains in the grave. Surely, 
if it is resurrection for the body to remain in the 
grave, it is birth never to have been born. The 
recent explanation that Christ rose from the dead 
by telepathy, might also go on to explain that he 
was born and died by telepathy. 

Passing through the gates of death, Christ left 
his body behind as the hostage of his return. He 
entered at once the state of disembodied spirits. He 
was thereby out of touch with the physical realm 
and the world where his person and atonement were 
needed. Soon he returned to the earth. He came 
back from the grave. It would not have been com- 
ing back from Joseph's tomb at all, unless he came in 
his body. It was a changed, a deathless body, with 
new powers and qualities; yet so identical in form 
with his former body that his disciples recognized 
him. His person could not now be treated by sin 
and sinful men as was the pre-resurrection body. 
After the resurrection his entire being was wholly 
fitted for the personal mediation of atonement, 
except that it was still in local relation. 

In the person of the risen Christ there resides 
the sum and substance of the instituted atonement. 
In his victory on the cross sin lost forever the 
power of direct opposition to him. In part this was 
the promise and potential of the complete rout and 
final vanquishment of sin. At the same time Christ 



The Resurrection and the Atonement 275 

had gained not simply the mastery over sin, but the 
place of personal satisfaction for it in relation to 
the Father. If, after what Christ had become to 
the Father in his death, some way could be found 
whereby he could enter human life, and there exer- 
cise his death-bought relation to sin and the sinner, 
sin's doom would be sealed and man's salvation 
secured. Toward that end the resurrection was an 
indispensable step, because of the personal nature 
of the atonement. It brought the Redeemer nearer 
to the place which he could fitly fill as embodiment 
and mediator of divine atonement. 

Jesus entered, by the resurrection, the higher 
physical state to which man was destined. There 
was still another needed step in the removal of the 
limitation of the local relation of his person. In his 
ascension he entered the glorious state and relation 
which his deity permitted, and ultimately involved. 
From thence he could come forth in the might and 
glory of the Spirit of God. What further change his 
ascension wrought upon his body, we can but specu- 
late from what Stephen, Paul, and John saw in 
their visions. No doubt glory and power were as 
much added to it in particular, as to his person in 
general. 

The withdrawal of the physical prepared the way 
for the spiritual presence of the risen Lord. It is 
through the presence of the Spirit that there is 
made available to all the virtue and power of 
Christ's atonement. He gives himself by his Spirit. 



276 The Living Atonement 

Through his presence in the Holy Ghost, Jesus is 
able to communicate and thereby consummate his 
atonement. The Spirit of Jesus in his divine, aton- 
ing life bears to men the rich fruits of redemption 
by his death on the cross. Because of his death on 
Calvary the giving of the Holy Spirit was possible 
as never before. In. the atonement the Spirit had 
new reason for access to human life ; and in the per- 
son of Christ he had new power of ingress into 
human lives. The giving of the Holy Spirit after 
the institution of atonement was possible on a vastly 
larger scale, and with richer bequeathment. Hence- 
forth the Spirit of God was freighted with the 
atoning life of the Redeemer. In the Holy Spirit 
Jesus was enabled to fill his place in all the earth as 
The Living Atonement. 

III. In discussing the institution of atonement, 
that was dealt with which might be termed loosely 
the transcendent to human experience. There may 
now be taken up the study of what might be called 
with reference to human experience, the atonement 
immanent. Christian belief asserts that God is both 
immanent and transcendent. A God who is wholly 
transcendent is wholly uncomprehended. A God 
who is only immanent does no more than worship 
himself. Such worship is not religion. Religion 
cannot be reduced to God worshiping himself. 
Pantheism is not a religion; it is a philosophy. 
The idealism which makes God worship himself, is 



The Resurrection and the Atonement 2JJ 

not religion ; it is the philosophy of the impossibility 
of religion. 

In the atonement there must be both the trans- 
cendent and the immanent, as truly as in the being 
of God. This is the more necessary since it is 
grounded and embodied in a divine personality. An 
atonement altogether transcendent to human ex- 
perience would have no moral content for it, and 
therefore no saving efficacy. An atonement only 
immanent would be as a god only immanent. It 
would be no atonement. The doctrine of it would 
be a ladder for philosophy to stand on end in the air, 
upon which to climb and perform its balancing tricks. 
It would be much shorter than Jacob's ladder. 
Like it, however, the material of it would be dream- 
stuff, but not God-given, as was Jacob's. An ex- 
clusively moral influence theory of the atonement, 
for an example of the wholly immanent, fits better 
with speculative philosophy than with experimental 
theology. An atonement that did not lay hold upon 
God and make right with him, as well as possess 
human hearts, would be fatally ineffective. 

There must be both the transcendent and the 
immanent in perfect atonement. As the personality 
of God depends on his transcendence, so does the 
power of the atonement upon its transcendence. As 
living touch with God is through his immanence, 
so living touch with the atonement is through its 
immanence. In the immanent is mediated to us 
what the transcendent has for us. The transcendent 



278 The Living Atonement 

cost the death of Christ ; the immanent costs his life. 
The Godward range of the atonement cannot be 
fully explored for the very reason that it is the 
transcendent part; yet it is the very part toward 
which theology has hitherto directed its attention 
for complete statement. This will never be given. 
If it could, the atonement would cease to be the 
transcendent. When the infinite can be put in a tea- 
cup, then may the transcendent be fully investigated. 
The tendency to reduce to teacup transcendency the 
Godward mediation of the atonement, has invariably 
cheapened it. 

There is far more promise of success and help- 
fulness in setting forth the atonement immanent, 
though lack of practice will, no doubt, hinder much. 
In coming days it is the doctrine of the atonement 
immanent which will receive increasing share of at- 
tention. The moral influence theory was a blessing 
to theology, in turning the study of the atone- 
ment in this direction. Usually theology has been 
charged with degenerating into the mystical when 
dealing with the immanent. The mystical, how- 
ever, is not simply the divine in the immanent ; it is 
rather the meeting place of the immanent and the 
transcendent, and is essential to healthful Christian 
experience. Without the mysticism of the Saviour, 
crucified yet risen, ascended yet abiding with us, 
Christian experience would be an earth without a 
sky, a sky without a star, a star and no beyond. 
Christian mysticism is not illusion; it is profusion 



The Resurrection and the Atonement 279 

of vision. It is not gazing into a spiritual fog, but 
seeing afar, beyond the mounds of death. 

The atonement in its relation to the resurrection 
and the ascension, has a wealth of mysticism. It 
brings to human life the power of vision and its 
choicest mysticism. Christ himself is the mystery 
of revelation and the revelation of mystery. Risen, 
reigning on high, and seated upon the throne of 
divine righteousness, he wears, as the world's 
Atonement, the crown of glory and of God. 

Rise, glorious Conqueror, rise; 
Into thy native skies, 

Assume thy right: 
And where in many a fold 
The clouds are backward rolled, 
Pass through those gates of gold 

And reign in light! 



XVII 

THE LAW OF THE ATONEMENT IN 
HUMAN EXPERIENCE 



In a word, it is in religious experience itself that our con- 
fidence in the divine redemptive wisdom and goodness 
has its roots, its evidence, and its hope of attaining its 
end. The very conception of redemption is supremely a 
religious conception; its proof is therefore necessarily to 
be found in religious experience. . . For the individual, 
therefore, the proof of the doctrine of redemption must 
always continue to be his own experience of religion as the 
power of a new life. _ Pr(?/< Q T La ^ 



It is subjectively that the objective is realized. . . The two, 
then, are really inseparable as convex and concave. Ob- 
jective — that is, wholly without subjective realization — is 
the same as non-existent. Subjective, that is not objec- 
tive also, is hallucination. So with the cross and its aton- 
ing sacrifice. The subjective or moral theory that finds 
all its meaning within us men and our individual con- 
sciences, and makes but little of the act external, objec- 
tive, historical, consummated adequately and once for all — 
this, in trying to realize for itself the meaning of atone- 
ment, is really cutting off, as it were, the blossom which 
should become fruit, from the root by which it lives. On 
the other hand, the simply objective theory, which forgets 
the place of the cross within the Christian life, which says, 
" Go your way ; be content ; the atonement was once a 
transaction, with such and such meaning between God 
and Christ; but you have nothing in it, except to believe 
that it is a fact, finished and done " — this goes far to 
deprive the root of that fruit-bearing capacity which is its 
own inherent and proper meaning. The ultimate realization 
is indeed to be within us, the very transfiguration of our- 
selves. The sacrifice of Christ, as merely external to us, 
does indeed include all possibility, but as yet it only is as 
possibility; it is potential, it is preliminary — and it is 
provisional. —Canon R. C. Moberly, D. D. 



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

THE LAW OF THE ATONEMENT IN HUMAN 
EXPERIENCE 

Experience is life; but all life is not experience. 
There may be unconscious life ; but there can be no 
unconscious experience. The moral elements of 
life, because of their experiential nature, cannot be 
found in unconscious processes. While subcon- 
scious processes may be allied with it, Christianity 
cannot, because of its ethical nature, be thought of 
as normally taking a subconscious or a magical 
method of working. In ordinances, sacramental 
magic is a travesty on Christianity. There can 
be no ethical or religious impartation apart from 
experience in its reception. 

This is not saying that all processes of Christian 
life stop short when they reach the border called con- 
sciousness. Even within the bounds of conscious- 
ness, no one fully realizes all that is taking place in 
his religious life. Nevertheless, Christianity as a di- 
vine service and a character-building process, cannot 
work in a state of unconsciousness. Character is 
accumulated as the result of willing, and there is no 
unconscious willing. Divine service is devotedness, 
and there is no involuntary devotedness. 

283 



284 The Living Atonement 

Christianity is mainly redemptive. If the method 
of its salvation did not include the working of the 
moral and spiritual nature, it would be unmoral and 
unspiritual. However much the saving power of 
Christ transcends human understanding, it must 
enter moral experience to do its work. Only as his 
atonement is capable of being translated into experi- 
ence, is it atonement in actuality. 

Those who hold to mechanical theories of the 
atonement, usually make no attempt to show how it 
becomes vital to human experience. They are satis- 
fied that in some real, though obscure way, it does 
its work. If the atonement were thought of as 
magical or mechanical in its institutive process, it 
would be difficult to show how it escapes from be- 
ing the same in its operative process. Whatever it 
is at one end, it is at the other. If we had con- 
sidered in a mechanical fashion the way in which 
Christ became the atonement, we would now be 
handicapped in explaining how he mediates it in 
human experience. Setting forth in terms of ethical 
experience his instatement as atonement, has helped 
in preparing for the work of presenting its equation 
in human experience. 

I. Before showing that the atonement is mediated 
according to the law of human experience, it would 
be well to explain what is meant by law itself. The 
following description will not be exhaustive. Some 
subjects are such fathomless deeps that in attempt- 



The Atonement in Human Experience 285 

ing to describe them we either drown in vain at- 
tempt to reach the bottom or merely swim upon the 
surface. Such an ocean of truth is law. 

Laws may be classified as constitutional and mo- 
dal. There is always constitutional law back of 
modal law. The first is the principle by which a 
thing is constituted; the second is the method or 
principle by which the thing so constituted works. 
For example, water is made by the union of oxygen 
and hydrogen in certain proportions ; this is the law 
of its being. The existence of water is brought 
about according to the principle contained in this 
constitutional law. Water runs down hill. This 
is the method of its habitual movement. It is the 
law of gravitation — which is a modal law. 

The constitutional law of the atonement is one 
thing; its modal law is another. In endeavoring 
to describe the institution of the atonement, we were 
dealing with the former law. We now take up the 
law by which the atonement does its work of right- 
ing the wrong of sin in human lives. One had to 
do with the process by which the person of Christ 
became the atonement; the other is the modal law 
of divine self-impartation. 

There is the law by which the moral nature of 
man comes into being, and the law according to 
which this nature works. What is constitutional 
law in man's being, is modal law in the divine ac- 
tivity. God gave man the law of his being, and 
thereby he defined what should be the modal law of 



286 The Living Atonement 

man's life. There may, or may not be, harmony 
between the laws or habits of man's moral activity 
and the law of his moral being. God's revealed law 
for man's proper activity is that which states the 
correspondence that should here exist. Sin is the 
lack of correspondence between modal and constitu- 
tional law. Sin can be atoned for only as these two 
laws are made to conform to each other. 

The atonement was not made to save us from 
law, but unto it. There is a sense in which Christ 
saves us from the law, and a sense in which he does 
not. We are not saved out of the world of ethical 
law, but unto it. We are saved from the law of sin, 
only as we are saved from sin; we are saved unto 
the law of God, only as God dwells in us. The mo- 
dal law of the atonement is higher than the modal 
law of sin; for one is a method of divine activity, 
and the other is a method of that which opposes the 
divine activity. In the atonement a lower consti- 
tutional law is superseded by a higher. This is 
done by bringing in the higher life, in which is 
resident the higher law. 

The law of sin is part of the law of the ethical 
world. Even in its unrighteousness it works ac- 
cording to the righteous law of God. Of course, it 
does not work the righteousness of God ; it opposes 
it. Sin does not break the foundational laws of the 
ethical world, it conforms to them. The soul that 
sins, dies; it could not be otherwise. Sin does not 
violate that righteous, ethical law ; it exemplifies it. 



The Atonement in Human Experience 287 

Sin cannot break the foundational laws of the moral 
world, otherwise it would undo itself. Even God 
cannot prevent sin from bringing forth death; but 
he can prevent the eternal death of the sinner by- 
bringing forth the atonement of life everlasting. 
In man's nature God replaces sin by himself, so that 
God's modal law and man's may be one and the 
same. 

If sin does not break the foundational laws of the 
ethical world, we may be sure the atonement does 
not. For example, the atonement does not interfere 
with the law of human responsibility; rather, it 
establishes it. Even in this day we must set forth 
a limited atonement. This is a day of the blind re- 
moval of limits ; and such a false liberalism undoes, 
rather than gives freedom. It would not help us 
in interpreting the atonement. An atonement with- 
out any ethical limitation, would be no atonement. 
The atonement of Jesus Christ is limited, not to num- 
bers, but to contact and consent. We have already 
mentioned the law of contact in its mediation. The 
law of consent is based upon the fact that the Liv- 
ing Atonement " tasted death for every man." He 
did not thereby sweep away the right of each soul 
to decide its own destiny. God calls to righteous- 
ness; but he does not compel. Compulsory right- 
eousness or compulsory atonement would be impos- 
sible. 

The older Calvinism held that God foreknew be- 
cause he had predetermined. The elect were, in 



288 The Living Atonement 

this view, what might be roughly called the pets of 
predestination. God foreknew them because he 
knew whom he would effectually call. This made 
his foreknowledge depend upon his intentions; but 
he foreknew what sin would do, though such was 
not part of his intentions. Has he not as worthy 
and real foreknowledge about all other things? 
Election on the sole basis of arbitrary predestination 
loads upon God a responsibility for the lost remain- 
ing so. If the whole credit of salvation is to be 
given to divine election, responsibility for the lack 
of such election unto salvation in the case of mil- 
lions lost, is left without moral justification. " He 
willeth not that any should perish; but that all 
should come to repentance." This God could not 
rightfully claim, if but his will is the sole ground of 
his election. God must plan and elect; but he does 
this on no arbitrary basis. In the atonement he pre- 
determines; but this includes sufficient room for 
voluntary moral response on the part of man. God's 
election is more truly and directly to service than to 
salvation. In neither election nor in atonement does 
God usurp the functions and assume the responsi- 
bility of man's will and moral nature. He never 
does for man what man will be the better for the 
doing himself. He had better let man choose per- 
dition, than treat him as a mere unmoral animal. 

No law of God is arbitrary, for his laws reflect 
his nature, which cannot be arbitrary. The law 
which has to do with man's spiritual nature, most 



The Atonement in Human Experience 289 

largely reflects the divine nature. Moral law is 
never a matter of mere divine decrees. All ethical 
law has eternally existed in the being of God. Only 
men attempt to make laws of right and wrong. We 
make modal law, rather than discover what it should 
be according to its counterpart in constitutional law. 
That is the trouble with the most of the laws of man 
— they are made rather than discovered. They are 
pottery when they should have been granite. If our 
parliaments sought to discover laws, rather than to 
manufacture them, there would not be such moun- 
tainous heaps of legislative junk, and our code- 
books would not so often be mortuary journals. 

II. We come now to the consideration of the 
atonement in relation to human experience. The 
law which we must forthwith examine, is the sub- 
ject-object law of all our experience. This working 
principle, or modal law of human experience, is in 
our day being brought more and more to the fore- 
front. 

In love, for example, there must be the subjective 
— the one who loves, and the objective — the one 
loved. Neither the subjective nor the objective 
alone would be love. The two are utterly insep- 
arable in this life-process. All consciousness, faith, 
hope, hate, interest, and experience in general, pro- 
ceeds according to this subjective-objective working 
principle. These two inseparable parts in the proc- 
ess of experience, are like the blades of a pair of 

T 



290 The Living Atonement 

shears ; neither is of use without the other. It was 
the failure to recognize this that resulted in theo- 
ries of the atonement being built up on either a 
subjective or an objective basis exclusively. In 
consequence, such theories, instead of being com- 
plementary, took on the appearance of mutual con- 
tradiction. In keeping with this law of human 
experience, the atonement is always mediated in 
a subjective-objective method; and thus it not only 
conforms to the law of the life of man, for whom 
it was made, but becomes his life itself. 

There is the subjective sinner and the objective 
sin, the subjective wrong in the individual and the 
objective wrong to God and to others. There is the 
subjective Christ living in the human soul, and the 
objective " Christ crucified." In the experience of 
the atonement there is the subjective — the social 
union and ethical identification on the part of the 
saved and the Saviour; and the objective — the 
atonement on the cross. Thus, there is at least a 
threefold subjective and objective: the subjective 
wrong of sin's existence and increase in the soul, 
and the objective wrong to God and man; the sub- 
jective Living Atonement and the objective trans- 
action or experience by which he became such ; the 
subjective of the soul in possession of Christ and 
the objective of the Father and all others with 
whom the atonement makes right. 

In general the subjective may be described as the 
living union of Christ and the human soul resulting 



The Atonement in Human Experience 291 

in the sinner's apprehension of the wrong of sin 
and the transfusion and transference of the cleans- 
ing and redeeming spirit and life of Christ. In 
general the objective may be considered as the per- 
sonal sacrifice of Christ on the cross. This whole 
process of the mediation of atonement does not pro- 
ceed upon a theory. It is the Living Atonement, and 
not a theory of the atonement, that is received. The 
benefit thereof is conferred not by logic, but by life. 
The individual may not be able to define just what 
Jesus did for him in his death. Of this, however, 
there may be some rays of apprehension. The merit 
and meaning of the atonement is so great and its 
truth so many-sided that one must find it hard not 
to see some glimmering of its meaning. Different 
persons may state in different ways what seems to 
them to be most prominent in the objective basis of 
the atonement. Theories may also vary as to the 
subjective. The essential is not the form of the indi- 
vidual's statement of the atonement, but the objec- 
tifying of it in a subjective-objective realization. 

With some persons the subjective in the process 
of the atonement seems to be more prominent than 
the objective, and with others the reverse. Prob- 
ably it resembles in this matter the character of the 
individual's experience in general. In persons pre- 
dominantly thoughtful, the subjective is seldom 
more prominent. The benefit thereof is not in any 
instance to be measured by the amount of outward 
manifestation. The resultant spiritual life is in all 



292 The Living Atonement 

cases the test of the reality of the reception of the 
atonement. Children are often misjudged because 
of the quiet nature of their relation to Christ. Some 
judge in all religious matters according to efferves- 
cence, not effort. Let us also remember that all 
there is for us in the atonement of the eternal Son of 
God is not received in a moment. 

It is the subjective-objective nature of experience 
which gives rise to the idealistic-realistic nature of 
life in general. We need Christ in both our ideal- 
ism and our realism, our subjective and our objective, 
for unity of Christian life, similarity of purpose, and 
co-operation with one another. The subjective and 
idealistic, apart from him, may, for example, read 
anything it pleases into the objective word of God. 
A dozen persons may find a dozen differing mean- 
ings in the same passage of Scripture. The identity 
of Christ in both the interpreters of it and in the 
word, secures common understanding and agree- 
ment of interpretation. Individuals may be pos- 
sessed by very different and inharmonious religious 
and social schemes. Possessed in common by the 
life of Christ, men may have common ideals and 
common programme in Christian work and social 
reform. So also in the atonement there must be 
this identity of the same Christ in its subjective and 
objective — in subjective mediation and objective 
transaction and person — in order that there may be 
unity in the process, universality and harmony in 
its experience. 



The Atonement in Human Experience 293 

To save disappointment in regard to the results of 
this analytic method in setting forth the mediation 
of the atonement, let us frankly admit that there is 
a grave insufficiency in describing its process first 
subjectively, then objectively. It is as if one were 
to proceed to explain love, first as a passion within 
a soul, secondly as a soul within a passion ; whereas 
love is the embrace of soul with soul, in self-giving 
and self-finding. The atonement too is the love- 
embrace of the Saviour and the soul in self-giving, 
self-finding, and sin-righting. 

In such an analytical presentation of love or of 
the atonement, the essential warmth of the life- 
process is lost. Description fails to get at the heart 
of the matter, when we deal with vital processes. 
The innermost of the mediation of the atonement 
baffles analysis and defies description. As even the 
most virile and elaborate treatment of the subject 
of love must depend upon the help of the experi- 
ence of love itself to explain it, so must we rely 
upon the experience of the atonement to interpret 
what is here written, and to supplement what cannot 
be put into words. There are times in life when 
we wish that words did not mean so much; and 
there are other times when they seem so pitiably 
weak as to be well-nigh useless. 

Words are the motes of thought and nothing more. 
Words are like seashells on the shore ; they show 
Where the mind ends and not how far it has been. 



XVIII 
ATONEMENT FOR THE WRONG TO GOD 



Reflection on the atonement, a recent theologian has ob- 
served, has in our time proceeded mainly under two im- 
pulses : (i) The desire to find spiritual laws which will 
make the atonement itself intelligible; (2) the desire to 
find spiritual laws which connect the atonement with the 
new life springing from it. The legitimacy of these desires 
no one will contest. There is certainly work for theo- 
logians to do under both of them. It has always been too 
easy, referring to this last point first, to treat the atone- 
ment as one thing, and the new life as another, without 
establishing any connection whatever between them. It 
has always been too easy, in teaching that Christ bore our 
sins and died our death, to give conscience an opiate, in- 
stead of quickening it into newness of life. 

— Prof. James Denney, D. D. 



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

ATONEMENT FOR THE WRONG TO GOD 

There are three great spheres of the atonement in 
human experience. These are as follows : the right- 
ing of sin's wrong to God, to fellow-man, and to 
self. These should not be thought of as successive 
or mutually exclusive spheres ; nor should it be for- 
gotten that the process of the atonement but begins 
at conversion. The wrongs of sin are too numerous, 
too vast in extent, and too serious in nature to be all 
made right at the instant of regeneration. Some of 
its wrongs are, indeed, made right as soon as Christ 
is received. Others there are which take a lifetime, 
and even much longer, in which to overtake all the 
injury wrought. 

I. The first wrong to God set right in individual 
experience is that of lack of faith in him. Faith 
is the primordial substance of human experience, 
whether good or bad. When we take the first step 
in right or in wrong, it is by means of faith. The 
different kinds of faith lay the foundation of the 
different kinds of experience, and explain their 
origin and differentiation. 

The just live by faith, so do the unjust. What a 

297 



298 The Living Atonement 

life is, depends upon what its faith is in. There may 
be but death for the moral nature in that which is 
believed in. The unjust die by faith, rather than live 
by it, because injustice can give no life to the soul 
which places faith in it. Faith is ever a conduit of 
death or a channel of life. The patent fallacy of 
an idealism to-day, is that faith is practically all 
subjective. It is all the same, it is said, whether a 
thing is so, or believed to be so, as far as the indi- 
vidual is concerned. Hamlet's saying, " There is 
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it 
so," and the common saying, " It does not matter 
what you believe so long as you are sincere," reflect 
this one-legged idealism. Belief that a bog is hard 
earth does not prevent sinking. Rather, it leads to it. 
Faith in badness, even when believed to be goodness, 
cannot give the experience of goodness. As much 
depends upon the objective as upon the subjective in 
the process of faith and of experience in general. 
Faith's subjective cannot work independently of its 
objective. The idealism which attempts to make it 
do so, gives its subjective a false independence, and 
reduces its objective to unreality. 

Love is greater than faith; but it is born of it. 
The daughter may be greater than the mother; but 
the mother is first. There would be no daughter if 
there were no mother ; and there would be no mother 
if there were no child. There would be no love if 
there were no faith ; and there would be no faith if 
there were no love ; but faith is first. Love may be 



Atonement for the Wrong to God 299 

the greatest thing in the world, but faith makes this 
world possible. Jesus began invariably with faith in 
setting men right. Faith in God can commit no sin ; 
want of faith can do nothing but sin, for it is sin. 
" Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin," said the great 
apostle. Sin is unfaith in God; it is the fruit of a 
character which will not believe in God ; but it is not 
simply negative belief. This is impossible. Belief in 
a negative is merely faith turned inside out. There 
is no infidelity which stops short with not believing. 
Unfaith in God is a faith as definite and positive as 
that of Christianity. In relation to God there is just 
faith in him and anti-faith. What appears as inno- 
cent unfaith, turns out to be the most dangerous 
anti-faith. It is because of what God is and has 
done for man, that lack of faith in him is most 
positive sin. 

As the primal wrong in experience made right by 
the atonement is lack of faith, it will be well to con- 
sider first the awakening of faith by it. In the sub- 
jective part of the process there comes in contact 
with the soul the direct influence of the unbounded 
faith of the living Christ. His faith proved its 
limitless power over sin in the atonement on the 
cross. Entering the soul which has received him, his 
first work is to start the rusted machinery of faith ; 
in fact, his very entrance is the starting of it. What 
the prophet did in waking from the dead the child 
of the widow, is a crude figure of what Jesus does in 
spirit to the soul dead in sin. He becomes the 



300 The Living Atonement 

resurrection and the life of its faith in God. Some- 
how as warmth gives warmth and life begets life, 
so the living faith of the Living Atonement in con- 
tact with the soul dead to faith in God, reproduces 
faith in him. Only faith can beget faith. We say 
doubt is catching, but that is merely the reproduction 
of faith of another kind. The Christ corrects all the 
evils which result from perversion of faith, and 
awakens to the same faith in God that he himself 
has. What is perverted is righted ; what is dormant 
is awakened; what is dead is revivified. The im- 
parted life of Christ, as soon as given, begins the 
exercise of faith in keeping with its nature. 

There must, of course, be an objective of faith, 
that it may be awakened to life exercise. The atone- 
ment of Christ on the cross is well fitted to bear its 
part in the objective process of righting the wrong 
of lack of faith in God. In itself it stands as the 
most colossal act of faith in God ever enacted on 
earth. Sinners die because of faith in unrighteous- 
ness or lack of faith in the Father; Christ died be- 
cause of his faith in righteousness and in the Father. 
Only faith awakens faith ; but this awakening needs 
a faith as definitely objective as subjective. How 
often has it been demonstrated that the atonement is 
an objective of faith more powerful than aught else ! 
How often have all God's love and grace elsewhere 
manifested, failed to win faith when the atonement 
succeeded ! Men have refused to believe in him as 
Creator and Providence, and trusted him as Re- 



Atonement for the Wrong to God 301 

deemer. They would not believe in him as holy, 
righteous, and good, but did believe in him as love 
and self-sacrifice. Calvary is the highest and fullest 
presentation of that which a sinner may understand. 
Even selfishness believes in being cared for. The 
cross presents God in such a light that only a wilful 
antagonism, a resolute badness, and an utter de- 
pravity will refuse to place faith in him when in any 
measure his work and purpose therein are under- 
stood. 

II. The atonement must in part be revelatory, to 
be redemptive. It must not only reveal God as 
worthy of faith and love, but sin as worthy of dire 
condemnation. The atonement on the cross fur- 
nishes the objective of the process of awakening 
the soul to the nature and desert of sin. Some would 
put this first, but that is not the order of experience. 
There can be no awakening to the nature and desert 
of sin that does not come from faith in God. Faith 
in God alone can realize the meaning of sin. Faith 
in the right must precede conviction of being in the 
wrong. There is no faith in righteousness that is 
not faith in God. The realization of how wrong sin 
is, depends in the last analysis upon what we think 
of God and feel toward him. The atonement reveals 
the real relation of sin to God. At the cross divine 
love and sin contested for the faith of man. There 
sin in its treatment of God revealed the relation to the 
Father in which man is actually placed by sin, whither 



302 The Living Atonement 

it invariably moves, what is its unchangeable aim, 
and how utterly inexcusable it is. Not around Sinai 
but from Calvary thundered the deepest-toned con- 
demnation of sin. The most tragic exhibition of the 
crime of sin against divine unselfishness was enacted 
on Golgotha. The picture of its hideousness was 
painted in the blood of the cross. Yet all sin is in 
spirit precisely what it was at Calvary. The atone- 
ment is the revelation of responsibility for sin in the 
light of its indescribably awful character and of 
God's unutterable love. 

While the objective of the death of Christ has 
such revelation of the nature of and responsibility 
for sin, there would be no awakening to a sense of 
its guilt, were it not that the Living Atonement is 
at work within the soul, sharing in the subjective 
part of the process. As the sun's warmth in spring- 
time penetrates the frozen earth and wakens to life 
ice-bound vegetation, so does the life of Christ per- 
meate the spiritual nature which has been chilled to 
death by iniquity, and wakens to life the sin-bound 
being. In the Christ-nature is an inherent dread and 
righteous detestation of sin accentuated by the ex- 
perience of abhorrence during his death by it. In the 
spirit of the Christ is the highest power of impar- 
tation of his own feeling toward that which cost him 
infinite suffering and sacrifice. A spiritual trans- 
ference in highest potential takes place when Christ 
enters the soul. He telepathically transfuses its con- 
sciousness with his own thought about sin. 



Atonement for the Wrong to God 303 

Sometimes the very agony of the cross seems to be 
reproduced to some extent in the experience of those 
awakened to the sense of sin. No doubt the Saviour 
himself feels anew through union with the sinful 
soul the old horror from contact with and respon- 
sibility for sin. He suffers with the soul in the pain- 
ful process of realizing what sin means, how it in- 
terferes with fellowship to God, and what loss and 
wrong have resulted from it. The Sinless com- 
municates by divine metapsychosis the spiritually 
sane estimate of sin, and enables the soul by an 
ethical telepathy to share his feeling and the thought 
of God as to sin. The resultant sense of personal 
responsibility and guilt is sometimes quite over- 
whelming. That is often the case where it would be 
least expected. For example, in the recent Korean 
revival, and also in that in India, following in each 
place centuries of callousness as to the sinfulness of 
sin, the power of the atonement, both in subjective 
and objective, was seen in striking degree in sensi- 
tizing souls to the desert of sin. In reply to inquiry 
from eye-witnesses, there were received the follow- 
ing letters. Rev. Ralph E. Smith, of Cocanada, 
India, writes: 

In times of the revival we did indeed see much of the 
travail of souls which had suddenly become acutely con- 
scious of how insufferable was God's holiness. In the 
agony of soul caused thereby there were cries for par- 
don, the making of good resolutions, terror, sorrow, and 
burdens. But it seemed that only the sight of the cross 



304 The Living Atonement 

brought rest. Only those who saw in the cross the suf- 
ferings for their own sin, who cried out, " Oh, my sins 
have crucified him ; my iniquities have opened afresh his 
wounds," seemed to have the old sin in them killed suf- 
ficiently to allow them confidence for rejoicing. And I 
have seen enough to believe that when Jesus' sufferings for 
sin actually became those of the soul, by that soul in its 
agony entering into those sufferings, they avail to kill sin 
in the soul. And the fruit of this is a great sense of spir- 
itual cleanness and healthfulness, which enables the soul to 
enter into the joy and glory of the Lord. I have not 
yet systematized or coordinated the impressions then re- 
ceived. Perhaps I shall never be able to do so this side of 
the place where we shall know as we are known. 

Rev. A. W. Woodburne, of Yellamanchili, also 
writes : 

Almost without exception those who passed through the 
revival had flashed upon them by that wondrous unseen 
power a vision of Christ on the cross. They would cry out 
in agony unutterable, " Oh, it was my sins that nailed him 
there ! " Others under deep conviction would roll on the 
ground and cry, " My sins are probing his wounds and 
opening them afresh." Sometimes during the course of 
prayer the petitioner would break out into the Telugu ver- 
sion of our well-known hymn, " At the cross, at the 
cross." The vision of the cross seemed to be so real to 
them, and so to absorb them, that they could see nothing 
else, and they got no rest or peace until they got rid of 
sin by confession and forgiveness. And often, for fear 
those wounded feet and hands and pierced side might be 
still suffering for them, they would think up things about 
which they were in doubt, and even of years' standing, and, 
as the Telugu idiom puts it, they vomited them out in con- 
fession. And when this process of conviction and con- 



Atonement for the Wrong to God 305 

fession had been passed through, their joy was real and 
wonderful. They saw with new eyes the meaning of Rom. 
8 : 1. This verse was sounded out again and again like 
a shout of victory. The atonement had become a living 
reality to them and passed from the realm of theological 
abstraction to that of the experimental knowledge. 

III. In bringing about confession, cleansing, and 
pardon, the atonement is all powerful and efficacious. 
In its objective it stands as the substantial reason for 
confession, as well as the basis of pardon and the 
means of cleansing. The cross is an evidence that 
divine forgiveness is not based in indifference to the 
wrong forgiven ; it is also the assurance of God that 
forgiveness is accompanied by adequate atonement. 
The atonement is the basis of the remission of sins, 
for it is the provision of that which cleanses the soul. 
Sin could not be expelled by an artificial process. 
On the cross the divine life of the Son of God 
passed through an experience which perfected him 
as the sin-cleansing life and personality. Hence the 
eyes of the sinner rest on " the Crucified " during 
the cleansing process. 

In the subjective part of the process, this miracle 
within, the purging from sin, is accomplished. " The 
blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
" In whom we have redemption through his blood, 
the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the 
riches of his grace.'' What do these words of John 
and Paul mean in reference to the cleansing 
power of the blood of Christ? They certainly did 
u 



306 The Living Atonement 

not refer to the physical blood any more than Christ 
himself did when he spake of drinking his blood. 
His blood is the fittest material symbol of his life. 
Shed blood is the symbolic expression of his atoning 
life, even as the cross is of his sacrifice. When the 
life of the individual has been included in that of 
Christ's, a divine displacement of sin takes place, 
and all the cleansing power of the atonement is 
mediated to it. This divine life is both pure and 
purifying, and enables the soul to confess its sin, and 
to repudiate it in the name of Christ. 

,The same life which offered itself on the cross to 
the Father as the righting of the wrong of sin, now 
answers immanently and transcendently for the soul 
before the Father. It offers not only its own love on 
behalf of the sinner, but also begets in human souls 
a growing love for the Father. It moreover becomes 
the means of the divine releasement for sin's 
offense and wrong. The life instated by the cross 
into an existence as atonement is now instituted in 
the life of the individual as the power for expulsion 
of his sin, and as the link and bond of his union with 
God. The Redeemer, who assumes responsibility for 
the soul in all its relations on self-committal to him, 
assures for the future as well as answers for the 
past. The Living Atonement thus ever dwells in 
the soul, mediating between it and its God, and be- 
coming the permanent means of the Father's be- 
stowal of pardon, peace, and fellowship. " He ever 
liveth to make intercession," " Christ liveth in me," 



Atonement for the Wrong to God 307 

" Reconciled by his death," " Saved by his life," 
" We rejoice also in God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ, through whom we have now received the at- 
one-ment," " But of him are ye in Christ Jesus who 
was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteous- 
ness, and sanctification, and redemption." 

IV. The atonement on the cross was a satisfac- 
tion to God not simply in itself but also in the 
inauguration of satisfaction beyond. There was a 
divine satisfaction in the instatement of the atone- 
ment ; there is also a divine satisfaction in its medi- 
ation. There was the satisfaction which Jesus gave 
to the Father in his death; there is the satisfaction 
which he now gives to him in his own life and also 
in human lives. Jesus' power of rendering divine 
satisfaction was not exhausted on the cross, though 
it reached there the highest possible point; yet it is 
the great work of rendering satisfaction in the lives 
of men which makes of permanent value the satis- 
faction on Calvary. The satisfaction by the cross 
made possible the satisfaction by the Christian. 

The Living Atonement enters human lives in 
such method and measure that they satisfy God, 
negatively by the destruction of sin, positively by 
righteous living and personal sacrifice and service. 
The sacrifice on the cross reproduces itself in sac- 
rificial living. The power of lives to render this 
satisfaction is limited only by the completeness of 
the possession and indwelling of Christ. The atone- 



308 The Living Atonement 

ment on the cross was not, therefore, an unrelated, 
isolated satisfaction; it was that which has resulted 
in constantly increasing divine satisfaction. This 
extended and permanent satisfaction is ever 
grounded in that of Christ crucified. Through him 
immortal souls become eternal satisfaction to God. 
There is, therefore, both subjective and objective 
satisfaction to God in the atonement. The range of 
both of these is limited by the nature and propor- 
tions of the personal relations involved in each. 

An evidence that Christ's atonement is possessed 
by the individual consists in a strong sense of satis- 
faction in being right with God in Christ. This is 
but the reflection of the divine satisfaction. The 
great peace which results from Christ's redemption 
means that the objective atonement has been real- 
ized in the subjective. " For the whole fulness of 
God was pleased to dwell in him ; and through him 
to reconcile all things into him, having made peace 
through the blood of his cross." 

Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? 
The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. 



XIX 

ATONEMENT FOR THE WRONG TO 
FELLOW-MAN 



And here, glancing first of all at human society, we dis- 
cover the appalling fact that sin, once existing, becomes, 
and even must become, a corporate authority — a law or 
ruling power — in the world opposite to God. . . To break 
the organic force of social evil, thus dominant over the 
race, Christ enters the world, bringing into human history 
and incorporating in it as such, that which is divine. The 
life manifested in him becomes a historic power and pres- 
ence in the world's bosom, organizing there a new society, 
or kingdom, called the kingdom of heaven, or sometimes 
the church. For the church is not a body of men holding 
certain dogmas, or maintaining, as men, certain theologic 
wars for God; but it is the society of the life, the em- 
bodied word. Hence our blessed Lord, just before his pas- 
sion, considering that now the organic force of evil was 
to be broken, said, " Now is the judgment of this world, 
now is the prince of this world cast out." The princedom 
of evil is dissolved — the eternal life, manifested in the 
world, organizes a new society of life, breaks the spell for- 
ever of social evil, and begins a reign of truth and love 
that shall finally renew the world. 

— Horace Bushnell. 



CHAPTER NINETEEN 

ATONEMENT FOR THE WRONG TO FELLOW-MAN 

The second sphere of the atonement in human ex- 
perience is that of the relation between man and 
man. A wrong to man is no less a wrong to God. 
Sin wrongs man in man, and God in man. The 
greatest social wrong is that of godlessness in hu- 
man relations; the greatest spiritual wrong is un- 
brotherliness. In the social relations God's greatest 
victory must come. There sin and atonement lie 
in broadest dimensions, deepest significance, and 
greatest possibility. The greatest Godward effect 
of the atonement is manifested in making right 
between man and man. 

It is impossible that our wrong to God be made 
right by Christ without at the same time his making 
right our wrong to our fellow-men. The mediator 
between God and man is no less the mediator be- 
tween man and man. There can be no limitation 
of the atonement to the Godward direction. Christ 
has as much power to make man right with his 
brother as with God. In his person there is wealth 
enough of atonement to make right all the imper- 
ative and God-dishonoring social wrongs. No mat- 
ter how much wrong human lives may have suffered 

3ii 



312 The Living Atonement 

from injury by others, there is sufficient in Christ 
to compensate them. When the wronged refuse 
to accept the Saviour and his atonement, they them- 
selves block the way to the redress of their wrongs; 
and responsibility for the wrong remaining un- 
righted, then rests with them. 

I. In righting the wrong to man, the subjective 
and objective in the process of the atonement re- 
main unchanged from what they were in the first 
sphere. In the Christ who died on the cross, all 
humanity is brought into a new relationship. Christ 
died for all, and all are related to each other in his 
person and death. He thus enhanced and sealed the 
value of man to man, as well as of man to God. On 
man's part to refuse this new relationship, is to set 
at naught the death and person of the Son of God. 
Man is, henceforth, to us not simply a fellow-man, 
but a brother for whom Christ died. 

In subjective union with the Saviour, the soul is 
fitted to enter into the life of atonement, to enjoy 
companionship with the Living Atonement, and with 
those of like possession. In a limited way, there is 
atonement which the individual himself may make; 
but the very desire to do so, is begotten by the in- 
dwelling Christ. The wrong of lack of love and of 
personal interest toward fellow-man, out of which 
all other wrongs grow, cannot be rectified, except 
by Him through whom there is the restoration of 
man to man. The instatement of Christ in human 



Atonement for Wrong to Fallow-man 313 

relations means the restoration of normal relations 
between men. 

There are two types of wrong made right in the 
social sphere, one in which the individual must 
share with Christ in such rectifying, and the other 
where such human effort is impossible. There are 
countless lives wronged by us which have gone far 
beyond our reach. When Christ undertakes for a 
soul in the atonement, what a vast and complicated 
task he assumes ! How little we know of the num- 
ber of persons injured by us and the extent of our 
wrong done them ! Only divine omniscience can 
track down all our wrongs, and only a divine per- 
son could meet all these wrongs in atonement. The 
Lord represents in his person the infinite resources 
of God to make right all the wrongs of those to 
whom he is vitally related. As the Living Atone- 
ment he is the permanent instatement of God in hu- 
man relations. He rights the wrongs that spring 
from godlessness and unbrotherliness in the rela- 
tions between man and man. 

II. One of the chief wrongs righted in the social 
relations, is the lack of faith in atonement. Those 
who receive Christ's atonement, must believe in 
atonement, in making right, in righteousness. Fel- 
low-men are sometimes defrauded by persons who 
say that they trust in Christ. The fact is, the latter 
really believe, not in Christ, but in unrighteousness. 
To cause injury and refuse to make reparation is to 



314 The Living Atonement 

cut one's self off from Christ and his favor. Ras- 
cality cannot cover up its wrong by the thin veil of 
a mock faith in Christ's atonement. When men can 
in any measure undo a wrong and refuse to do so, 
they publish the fact that they have no real faith in 
righteousness, have neither part nor lot in Christ, 
and that the Living Atonement has no place in 
them. 

Unless the atonement of Christ begets in us a de- 
sire for righteousness, it has never been received at 
all. Unless it has made man desire to be personally 
right where he can be by his own effort, it has done 
nothing for him. God cannot morally do for a man 
even in atonement, what the man himself will be the 
better for doing. God will not forgive those who 
will not forgive ; and Christ will not atone for those 
who will not atone. Divine atonement is not of 
any value whatever to him who stubbornly blocks 
its way by refusing to make the atonement which he 
may. How can an unrepentant personality of in- 
iquity possess the atonement in the divine person- 
ality? The life in which Christ dwells infallibly 
bears the fruits of repentance of wrong, confession 
of the same, and all possible reparation. 

It is strange that God's gift of Christ should have 
received the treatment which it did from his own 
people. It is strange, also, that the greatest work 
of divine righteousness should be turned to the ends 
of unrighteousness. It is an utterly unworthy and 
immoral faith in the atonement which is guilty of 



Atonement for Wrong to Fellow-man 315 

such a perversion. The higher the order and the 
greater the moral value of anything, the more cer- 
tain and subtle the attempt of evil to subvert it. 
Jesus died for our sins ; but not to enable us to live 
unto them. How false the honor to Christ when 
one who has wronged another, stands by the in- 
justice, saying, " Jesus died for my sins, and this is 
one of them ! " Such a belief in the atonement is 
really the worst form of its rejection. Belief in the 
atonement begets righteousness ; it is the foundation 
of consistent living. It is the faith of demons and 
the doctrine of devils which presumes to found argu- 
ments for unrighteousness on this righteousness of 
Christ. To do this is to crucify Christ over again. 
It is, if possible, to be more cruel to him even than 
were they who nailed him to the tree. For the at- 
tempted debasement of the atonement there can be 
no atonement, but only the fiery indignation of the 
living God and the flaming sword of his vengeance. 
It has been charged as a weakness of Christianity 
that it has failed in ethical results. This has been 
brought to pass by our unethical and mechanical 
faith in Christ's atonement. Its subjective, torn 
from its objective, has been nailed to a cross of sac- 
ramentalism, and its powers killed. When there 
will be more preaching that the atonement is not 
simply an objective transaction, but a subjective 
power, we shall have the " ethical revival " so often 
discussed. The mediation of atonement is as. im- 
portant as its making. Its possession by man can- 



316 The Living Atonement 

not be its undoing. The atonement only in the 
objective has been almost utterly powerless to meet 
present-day needs and social conditions. When 
Christ is given his place as mediator of atonement, 
the false dependence upon the objective independ- 
ently of the subjective, will give way, and the power 
of the Living Atonement to make lives clean, will 
be seen. Men have shut the door in the face of 
Christ by objectively depending on the atonement, 
and subjectively refusing it. There can be no ethical 
revival that does not begin with the instatement of 
the heart of ethics in human life, the Living Ethic 
of Christ within the soul. The ethical results of his 
atonement cannot come when conditions are main- 
tained which defy the dwelling of Christ in the life 
of man. There are no clean lives with Christ kept 
outside; and there are no unrighteous lives pos- 
sessing the Living Atonement within them. 

III. There is but one way by which all there is in 
the atonement for us can be received and possessed 
by us, namely, by seeking to give to all others what 
there is in it for them. It is by being sunk out of 
sight in the great processes of the redemption of 
others, that we fully reach our own. He that is 
dead to evangelism is dead to the greatest move- 
ment of God for righteousness. To be dead to 
world-wide missions is to be dead to the greatest 
effort of God to-day. Not paddling along the shores 
of the local church interests, but launching out into 






Atonement for Wrong to Fellow-man 317 

the gulf stream of missions will make us right with 
God and man. If our lives are within the sweep of 
the mighty tide of righteousness flowing earthward 
in the Living Atonement, they will be swept on to all 
good. Only as men do their part in enabling Christ 
to reach all men, do they enable him to save them 
from a wrong to all men. The atonement is most 
ours, when most we give our lives as a channel 
through which it may reach our brothers. It is as 
instruments of the world's redemption that we most 
largely possess the righteousness of Christ. It is 
true that we receive salvation by faith in Christ; 
but how little can that man receive who believes in 
Christ as his Saviour only? It is the faith which 
works the hardest that possesses the most of the 
atonement of Christ. We owe it to Christ, as well 
as to the world, to give the gospel unto all men. 
World-wide evangelism is no more optional to the 
Christian than breathing. It is not a matter of 
choice to the Christian whether the kingdom of 
God is put first. In the nature of things it must be 
first. We seek first what we value most. We may add 
to our sin the greatest wrong of all by damming 
the flowing of this world's redemption through our 
lives. The atonement of Christ must most of all 
add to our condemnation, or make us spotless be- 
fore God and man. 

IV. The social wrongs of this world may be 
righted only by means of Him who is the world's 



318 The Living Atonement 

righteousness. His must also be the method. There 
has been constant conflict between the church and 
the Socialist in this matter. One says regenerate 
the individual; the other, reform the social institu- 
tions. In neither one nor in both these statements 
is to be found the whole truth. To regenerate the 
individual would be all right, if the social system 
in which he lived did not tend to degenerate him, 
To reform the social systems on a basis of unselfish- 
ness would be all right if the unregenerate could 
conform to such. There is no system of righteous- 
ness and unselfishness with which men, as they are, 
would be satisfied. The unregenerate heart is not 
subject to the law of God, which includes perfect 
social law, neither indeed can be. The world can- 
not be made right by social systems, when the social 
nature is wrong; nor can it be made right by indi- 
vidual regeneration so long as the social systems 
are largely in the interest of classes, tyrannies, and 
hoary injustices. 

Social study is of God. It should be not merely 
the study of present social conditions, but of God's 
way out of them. The Socialist of to-day is in but 
the first stage of social study. Sociology may have 
its evolution no less than theology ; and like it must 
pass through three stages. Attention will be suc- 
cessively centered first on method, then on means, 
and finally on end, which is manhood. The Socialist 
in the system-stage of method can but little appre- 
ciate as yet other points of view. The church, with 



Atonement for Wrong to Fellow-man 319 

its ignorance of or indifference to social conditions, 
little appreciates the seriousness of the Socialists. 
The church needs to learn that there is no such thing 
as the individual apart from social environment and 
institutions. The Socialist needs to find out that 
there are no social systems which of themselves can 
make bad men good. The predominant tendency 
in individual or in system may persist in spite of 
each other. All men are not the same in social 
tendency; and all social systems are not the same 
in moral tendency. The need of wealth does not of 
necessity make men bad. Possessing it does not 
make them good. The individual is never regener- 
ated out of the social conditions, nor by them. Good 
or bad, he stands within the moral environment, and 
as part of the social structure and system. 

When the means and the end of social life will 
become of interest to the church and to the Socialist, 
the indispensability of Christ will stand out like the 
sun in the heavens. Already it has been proved 
that no matter what the social status of systems and 
institutions, the good in them has been enhanced 
and the evil diminished in exact proportion as Christ 
has been enthroned in the lives of those within them. 
The poorest social system with the living Christ in 
those within it, is infinitely better than a social 
Utopia without him. Think of the contradiction — a 
Christless Utopia ! Christ's mediation between em- 
ployer and employee is vastly better than Christless 
communism. The bad forms of social institutions 



320 The Living Atonement 

tend to be replaced by the better, under the influence 
of the Lord. Labor and capital are opposed only 
because the persons they represent are opposed. 
The better the social system, the greater must be 
the abuse of it by the selfish life. The more of the 
spirit of Christ within our lives, the more must we 
strive for social systems planned on principles of 
righteousness, and with the means adapted to the 
end of manhood in God. 

We worship the Prince of Peace and multiply 
" dreadnaughts." What right have we to say that 
we love God, if we tolerate the awful waste of 
present-day armaments and the economic systems 
born of class interests and social injustices? Every 
battleship and class privilege mocks the love of God 
to man. God is no partisan Deity, though by some 
of our social conditions, economic principles, and in- 
ternational methods we seem to say so. No man has 
authority to believe that God loves him, unless he 
believes that God loves every individual of the 
whole human race. We do not believe that God 
loves all men unless we make our lives the expres- 
sions of that love. The universality of God's love 
and the brotherhood of man is not only the procla- 
mation of Christ ; he is one by whom alone both 
may be realized. 

The better social systems will come as fast as 
we are ready for them. We forget that systems of 
righteousness cannot advance faster than the prog- 
ress of our lives in righteousness. The Christ in 



Atonement for Wrong to Fellow-man 321 

social systems keeps pace with the Christ in the 
social nature of mankind. We need better political, 
economic, and social systems; but most of all we 
need the Living Atonement, who will inspire us 
with his plan of righting the wrongs in these sys- 
tems and be the living means of reaching the end of 
all related life. Let the same Christ be center and 
circumference, system and life of the social world, 
and it will be right. Its freedom will be won. Free- 
dom will not then mean freedom from labor, right- 
eousness, and the law of Christ. He alone who 
shared the bonds of humanity can make it free 
economically, socially, and spiritually. In him we 
free ourselves in freeing others. By him we pay 
the debt we owe mankind, and right its wrongs. 

Is true freedom but to break 
Fetters for our own dear sake, 
And with leathern hearts forget 
That we owe mankind a debt? 
No; true freedom is to share 
All the chains our brothers wear, 
And with heart and hand to be 
Earnest to make others free. 



XX 



ATONEMENT IN MORAL CHARACTER 
AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 



Moreover, the spiritual possibilities that lie in a relation- 
ship with Christ grow immeasurably greater when Christ 
is thus conceived as the self-communicating life-force. 
For being himself possessor of life in God, he must trans- 
form into divineness every life he enfolds : being himself 
the Son, he will give to all who make right adjustment 
of themselves to him the power to become sons. Life 
gripping life transforms into its own likeness the life it 
grips. That is known even in common human experience. 
A personality which obtains a commanding influence over 
another personality molds its subject personality to its 
own shape. What result save this can follow from the 
commanding mastery over our nature of the nature of 
Christ — the refining of the unrefined in us, the purifying 
of the sinful, till we are in the actual make of us fit 
members of that family of God whereof Christ himself is 

head? —Henry W. Clark. 



CHAPTER TWENTY 

ATONEMENT IN MORAL CHARACTER AND 
SPIRITUAL LIFE 

We have come to the third and last phase of the 
work of Christ's redemption. How wondrously 
hath God framed together and interrelated in him- 
self all things in the universe ! Nothing is complete 
without him. No one can be wrong in any relation 
when right with God. All our other relations are 
but reflections of the primary relation to Christ. 
But they are more; they are spheres in which the 
Lord now lives, moves, and has his being. He 
" filleth all in all." 

What man is in relation to God and to fellow- 
man is the true measure of what he is in himself. 
He cannot be one thing in himself and another in 
his relations. He has existence as moral character 
and spiritual life; but he has also his place in the 
relations which this character and life involve. If 
the wrong in these relations is made right, it must 
also be made right in his character and life. 

In the perversion of moral character and the 
degeneration of spiritual life, we cannot but in- 
juriously affect God and our fellow-beings, as well 
as ourselves. Sin is a wrong all the way around. 

3 2 5 



326 The Living Atonement 

When it touches anywhere, it touches everywhere. 
If there were but one sinner in the world, and he 
guilty of but one sin, that wrong would injuriously 
affect the whole moral universe of God and man. 

I. Life is a brief summer-time. Though short its 
fleeting day, it is long enough to produce maturity 
of spiritual form and fixity of moral character. In 
this brief season eternal wrong may be done to self 
by producing a soul barren in worth of moral char- 
acter. Devoid of spiritual life, dead to communion 
with God, a foe to all goodness, the soul becomes a 
barrier to its own welfare, a discord within, and a 
worthlessness without. The atonement of Christ 
rights these wrongs to man himself. It saves his 
life by saving his soul ; and saves his soul by saving 
his life. It has power to create moral character and 
to impart spiritual life. Through the indwelling of 
the Living Atonement, righteousness becomes the 
fiber of his moral being, and love the energy of his 
spiritual life. 

Some believe in salvation by character. If by 
character were meant that of the Living Saviour, 
it would be true. Instead, it means that we are 
saved by our own characters. This is a confusing 
of end with means. We are saved unto character. 
Salvation by the character-building powers of the 
individual soul, is but the old doctrine of saving 
yourself, deceivingly dressed up in an ethical garb. 
Salvation by character describes a character from 



In Moral Character and Spiritual Life 327 

which it would be salvation to be saved. It would 
mean that the individual believes in his own powers 
to right all the wrong to himself as well as to God 
and man. Man could no more right all the wrong of 
his sin than he could lift the mountain ranges to the 
skies. It is time enough to propose salvation by 
character when some one has been saved thereby. 
Character is the record and result of salvation. 

The moral and social powers of the soul share in 
the process of receiving salvation. The same pow- 
ers, by the exercise of which we went astray, must 
be used in bringing us back. The will and the social 
powers are the gatekeeper and the gateway alike for 
loss or gain. A man would have no character at 
all if he were not a social being. In social life char- 
acter most clearly manifests itself. There it realizes 
and cultivates moral affinity. There it finds material 
for growth. The life of character is manifested in 
social affinity. What is in one character passes over 
into another by means of the social nature ; and the 
character of one person molds that of another. The 
more mature the character, and the greater its social 
energy, the more complete is its control in the con- 
struction of other characters. The more intense the 
spiritual life, the greater moral energy will it mani- 
fest in interpenetrating other lives, thereby commu- 
nicating and reproducing itself. Because of what 
Jesus is in character and life, he is able to redeem 
all characters and lives with which he comes into 
social correspondence. He can change the character 



328 The Living Atonement 

of every individual who fully receives him, and 
transform it into the quality and stature of his own. 
The atonement enters character in the same way that 
sin did, namely, by moral choice and the social gate- 
way. 

II. The objective in the process of redeeming 
character and life is that of the moral character and 
spiritual life of Him who died on the cross. A clear 
portraiture of him and his ethical principles are prov- 
identially given in the Scriptures. They are, there- 
fore, the most valuable moral literature in the world. 
In this objective is furnished the revelation of the 
extent of the loss and wrong of sin. It is measured 
by the difference between Christ's character and life 
and ours. The place which Jesus rilled in the life 
of the Father, the spirit and purpose of his life, the 
work of love and redemption which led him to the 
cross, are not simply light on his character ; they are 
the light in which the deformity of human character 
stands condemned. The highest moral character in 
the universe was uplifted by the cross, and the 
greatest failure in the life and character of man was 
then revealed. 

As this great objective of the atonement rises up 
before the soul, there is first vexation at having 
been so duped by sin, then despair of ever becoming 
what Christ is in moral goodness. One moment 
there is doubt that God could ever forgive such 
wrong or repair such injury; the next the resolve 



In Moral Character and Spiritual Life 329 

that even if God does forgive, the soul will not for- 
give itself. The latter state is one of moral dis- 
harmony. In the cross is found the reason for self- 
forgiveness. When God paid such a price for atone- 
ment accompanying forgiveness, we dare not enter 
into judgment with and condemn ourselves. To re- 
fuse self-forgiveness would be to doubt the power of 
the atonement to right the wrong to ourselves, and 
in that measure to render it inefficient. In the Christ 
more is promised in moral character and spiritual 
attainment than was lost by sin. 

In him the tribes of Adam boast 
More blessings than their father lost. 

In the subjective part of the process, the Living 
Atonement in giving us spiritual life, saves us from 
ourselves as well as unto ourselves. Personal 
worthlessness is transformed into worthiness and 
wealth of personality by his incoming. Through 
vital union with his life, in its measureless breadth, 
intensity, and quality, we are taken out of ourselves, 
and our lives are drawn out into the richness and 
vastness of the interests and attainments of his own. 
The might of its upreach to the Father, the power of 
its down-reach to save the fallen, and the sweetness 
of its fellowship with God and man are made the 
possessions of the soul by the indwelling of the 
Living Atonement. The struggle of the soul be- 
comes an endeavor to throw off every limitation 
hindering it from being lost in him. The atonement 



330 The Living Atonement 

is a process of God and humanity entering into 
possession of the individual, and of the individual 
entering into possession of himself. The glory of 
God, the good of man, the possession of all things 
are possible to him in whom Christ has reproduced 
himself in moral character and spiritual life. 
Christ's love made him the owner of all humanity 
in the highest sense, and the love of Christ in us 
creates the character to which such universal owner- 
ship is possible. 

The indwelling of the Living Atonement results 
also in a blessed self-forgetfulness. It is a wrong of 
sin that it begets a morbid self-consciousness. When 
suffering from its spiritual prostration there is the 
constant agony of diseased self-consciousness. The 
more unfit the soul is as an object of its thought, the 
more consciousness centers itself there, and the way 
of recovery becomes barred. The soul possessing 
the presence of the Living Atonement tends to be- 
come Christ-conscious. Normal self-forgetfulness 
becomes habitual. When the thought of self does 
occur, it is the self of Christ's possession; and 
therein thought tends to rebound to him. Because 
of what Christ has become to the soul by his 
atonement, all things naturally suggest him. The 
more appreciation revels in him and his grace, the 
more impossible does it become for the mind in its 
thinking to put him aside. The more life merges 
into his, the more it finds its completion there. 
Filled with the richness of its thought and feeling 



In Moral Character and Spiritual Life 331 

about him, the soul is relieved from the poverty of 
self-consciousness. Christ has become its life con- 
sciousness. 

Christ must be subjective as well as objective in 
the process of ethical realization. When the atone- 
ment is made all subjective and independent of the 
objective atonement on the cross, Christ cannot own 
such a redemption as his. He cannot have fellow- 
ship with that which obscures his infinite sacrifice on 
Calvary. One cannot receive Christ and reject his 
work. If we have fellowship with his life, we can- 
not refuse fellowship with his sufferings in death or 
life. To ignore the instatement is to deny the 
official. To repudiate the cross is to reject the 
Christ. 

Righteousness of character resulting from the 
atonement is not to be judged by comparison with 
other persons. How often it happens that according 
to the law of the righteousness of God, some weak 
one falling again and again before the onset of some 
terrible appetite or passion, is really far more right- 
eous than some person walking very uprightly in 
these matters. In the one case there may be the 
righteousness of the life of Christ battling for the 
possession and ownership of the soul for which 
he died ; in the other there may be stolid self-right- 
eousness, resting indifferently upon laurels won by 
ancestors. The true measure of righteousness is 
advance in righteousness. He is the means of all 
progress in personal upbuilding. He is the vital 



332 The Living Atonement 

center of the righteousness of the moral universe. 
Possessing him and possessed by him, we are better 
than imitators of his righteousness; we are pos- 
sessors of it, the generic righteousness of the ethical 
world. 

The wrong to human personality as a divine 
instrument is also made right by the atonement. 
Sin weakens personality, dulls the mind, eats 
deeply into the spirit, destroys the temper of the 
soul in the heat of its passion, and leaves the divine 
instrument unable to hold edge, a broken tool, worth- 
less for the service of the Lord. Out of the crucible 
of divine love human personality comes in a spiritual 
amalgam with that of Christ, and this makes pos- 
sible a recasting and a reshaping of this material, 
so that the new personality becomes a fit instrument 
for the divine workshop where is wrought out the 
world's redemption. Once an instrument of un- 
righteousness, it now becomes the fit instrument of 
God. 

A portion of man's nature has not yet shared in 
this atonement. The physical part of man has yet 
to receive the atonement for the wrong received 
from sin. Meantime we are " waiting for our adop- 
tion, to wit, the redemption of our body." In the 
resurrection of the body the fitting of entire human 
personality to be an effective instrument of God 
takes place. As Paul graphically puts it: 

We wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall 
fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be 



In Moral Character and Spiritual Life 333 

conformed to the body of his glory, according to the work- 
ing whereby he is able even to subject all things unto him- 
self. 1 

III. As the highest form of truth is personal, 
and as the atonement on the cross is most compre- 
hensively expressed in Him who made it, so must the 
highest form of the atonement in effect be stated in 
personal truth. An atonement embodied in perfect 
personality is fully mediated when it has reached the 
production of perfect personality. Human per- 
sonality was made to grow; and the atonement is 
provision for its everlasting growth. The life in 
this world is but its babyhood. Who can guess how 
much it may grow in the world to come? The 
greatest wrong of sin is its existence and reproduc- 
tion; the greatest wrong to moral character is the 
transformation of it into the immoral, in which sin 
may ever abide and reproduce itself ; and the great- 
est wrong to spiritual life is the degradation of it 
into slavery to the ends of evil. The highest effects 
of the atonement are seen in the regenerating of 
human personality, and in the awakening in man 
the life of God. This secures the growing up of a 
personality which lives free from the law of sin, 
and reproduces Christ's spirit of self-sacrifice. 

Spiritual life means spiritual freedom. Freedom 
is the path which God made for man, when he made 
him. Any other road, however flowered and tempt- 
ing at first, is the way to spiritual slavery. " Every 

1 Phil. 3 : 20, 2i. 



334 The Living Atonement 

one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin." 
" If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall 
be free indeed." Christian life is the life of full 
liberty. Christ is our liberator, in him let us ever 
abide; for spiritual freedom is the blood-bought 
boon of Christ's redemption. 

Freedom is recreated year by year, 

In hearts wide open on the Godward side, 

In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, 
In minds that sway the future like a tide. 

No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes ; 

She chooses men for her august abodes, 

Building them fair and fronting to the dawn. 



XXI 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 



Could my zeal no respite know, 
Could my tears forever flow, 
All for sin could not atone; 
Thou must save, and Thou alone. 

—A. M. Toplady. 



Lord, I believe were sinners more 
Than sands upon the ocean shore, 
Thou hast for all a ransom paid, 
For all a full atonement made. 

— John Wesley. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 

Paul said : " I know whom I have believed." This 
was the substance of his positive theology. It must 
be the substance of ours also. He knew what 
Christ had done for him; that was the knowledge 
of certainty. We know what Christ has done for us ; 
and this is the most valuable religious knowledge 
which we possess. The conclusions of the mind 
alone may be overthrown by stronger minds; but 
no one can gainsay the facts of experience. From 
its decision there is no appeal. We know that bread 
satisfies hunger, and that Christ is the bread of life. 
What we know we know. 

The great test of both theology and preaching is 
spiritual helpfulness. To attain this they must do 
more than minister to men's doubts, draw from 
more than intellectual sources, and have more than 
mental culture in view. Mental culture is needed, 
but not so much as the salvation of the soul. Lec- 
tures on the chemistry of food, and on table manners, 
will not satisfy the starving. From cultured intel- 
lects with small souls one turns away in sickening 
dissatisfaction. Men are instinctively drawn toward 
those who, despite meager mental attainment, are 
w 337 



338 The Living Atonement 

large-souled. The new vessel of the Christian min- 
istry must be dragged over the harbor bar before it 
can put out into the open sea of full service. This 
bar is appreciation of people solely by an intellectual 
standard. So it is with theology. It has been 
stranded on the reef of intellectualism, with great 
waves of criticism pounding it to pieces. Theology, 
once out on the open sea of spiritual service, could 
breast those very billows triumphantly. Then they 
could at most but wash the decks of the theological 
ship. We need a theology, the full usefulness of 
which is assured according to the standard of the 
heart. 

In all science the order of procedure is from the 
known to the unknown. While attempting to learn 
the things we do not know, we must take our stand 
upon that which we do know. It will not do to 
construct a speculative theory, and then twist the 
knowledge of experience to suit the theory ; for this 
would reverse the law of progress. The Christ 
whom we know in our experience as the Redeemer 
from sin, is not to be interpreted by theories which 
do not have their inspiration and substance from 
this experience. What we have known Christ to 
be, must shape our theory of the atonement ; other- 
wise the theory will be mechanical and without the 
power of equating itself in the only place where it 
can have value — in experience. The Christian 
world has long waited for an order of theology, 
grounded in the facts of normal Christian experi- 



Summary and Conclusion 339 

ence. The theology founded upon the bedrock of 
experience, may build to the skies. It will not, 
in so doing, discount revelation ; rather, it will lay 
hold upon it. Revelation is to experience what 
sunlight is to the eyes. It saves us from groping 
in the dark. Sunlight and revelation may become 
experience. 

In his admirable Yale lectures (which might have 
been called "Pulpit Realism in Epigram'') Dr. P. T. 
Forsyth says : " Our Christian theology has been 
developed as the intelligent expression on the face 
of a living church." 1 There is no living church 
except as Christ is its life. He must become its life 
by redemption from the death in sin. In the facts 
of his redemptive work must therefore be found the 
nucleus of a positive theology. In the putting away 
of sin, he became the truth and essence of our 
theology. He is the substance of our salvation, and 
the dynamic of his evangelism. The theology of 
a living church must center in the truth which 
works in saving the lost. The atonement is central 
in Christian doctrine, because Christ is central in 
Christian life. 

Belief in the deity of Christ is a blasphemous 
sacrilege of faith; or it is justifiable and its main- 
tenance grounded in the results of the experience it 
begets. If Christ is God as well as man, belief in 
his deity can be justified only by the greatest and 
richest of spiritual results. Looking back through 

1 " Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind," p. 262. 



34° The Living Atonement 

the centuries in order to compare the effects of be- 
lief in, and denial of, the deity of Christ, there is 
not a shadow of doubt as to which has vindicated 
itself. Rejection of the Lord's deity does violence 
to the Christian soul, cuts the nerve of evangelism, 
and snaps the belt that communicates the power of 
the Infinite. Who Christ is, is told by the horizon 
and light, the health and life, the interest and energy 
which he gives. If his person is in proportion to 
what he has done for the world — and it must be — 
he is far beyond the category of man, and though 
not the less human, must be classified as divine, as 
deity. 

This is a world of God ; but it is also a world of 
sin. One may shut his eyes to either fact, and then 
blindly claim to see. The enormity of sin is but 
increased by a refusal to behold the fact of its exist- 
ence. The atonement is God's recognition of the fact 
and character of iniquity. To say that the atonement 
is what God did, in order that he might pass over 
sin in forgiveness, leads to the question, " What does 
God need in that case?" If we say that the an- 
swer is beyond us, then we confess that we do not 
know the meaning of atonement. If, instead, we 
specify some necessity in the relations of God with 
himself, we have removed the atonement beyond the 
pale of human experience. It then practically 
ceases to be ethical. When the Pacific Ocean could 
cease to be water, then could the atonement cease 
to be moral and spiritual. To be ethical it must deal 



Summary and Conclusion 341 

essentially with right and wrong. To be spiritual it 
must deal centrally with the impartation of a divine 
life. The extent of the wrong of sin is the realm 
in which the atonement must be denned. 

Through the Christian centuries there has been a 
gradual advance in conception and description of 
the atonement. The greatest of the later books on 
this subject is " Atonement and Personality," by 
Canon Moberly. He grasped the ideas that the 
atonement is mediated by the living, personal Christ, 
and that the true measure of its effect is seen in 
human personality when redeemed by it; but he 
made a repentance-death of the Christ to be the 
heart of the atonement. Once, indeed, he said, " It 
is Christ, then, who, in the fullest sense, is our 
atonement." Why he did not construct his theory 
in keeping with this statement, why he came so 
near to it and stopped, will remain a mystery. As 
an example of the convergence of thought from dif- 
ferent directions, it may be said that the present 
statement of the atonement was fully formulated 
before Moberly's great work came to hand. 

A personal or institutional theory of the atone- 
ment reproduces the Scripture outlines of the experi- 
ence of Christ in becoming the atonement by his 
self-sacrificing death. Each person is then left free 
to fill in for himself what he deems the content of 
the personal satisfaction of the Son to the Father 
and the nature of the righting of the wrong of sin. 
One thing must be guarded: the atonement is as 



342 The Living Atonement 

large as Christ. Anything less is but a fraction of 
it. Christ became the atonement in concrete by 
giving himself, a living righteousness, unto God 
and man for the righting of the wrong of sin. Be- 
ing human, as well as divine, he carried human sin 
into such divine relations as became the means of 
his instatement as personal atonement. He gave 
satisfaction to the Father by his destruction of sin 
in his death; and still both immanently and trans- 
cendently answers for us before God. The love 
which died on the cross is now deathless in human 
life. 

Life cannot possibly come from death; it comes 
only from life. Life and death beget after their own 
kind. We need both, however; we need to die 
and yet live; to die unto sin and to live unto God. 
The death to sin can be reproduced in our experi- 
ence only by the power of the death of Him who in 
it became the death of sin. Life unto God is begot- 
ten in us by the divine life which even the death 
for sin could not stay in its natural trend to the 
Father. What there is for us in the death of 
Christ, is mediated to us by his life and person. 
Through vital spiritual union with him, the virtue 
and merit of the atonement passes over into our 
lives, and thus we become a part of him. The be- 
stowment of the atonement is not according to the 
measure of the mental understanding which the 
recipient may have of its philosophy. It is accord- 
ing to the power of Him who is received by faith. 



Summary and Conclusion 343 

To receive the Lord Jesus is to receive the atone- 
ment. He is the atonement in embodiment and 
accessibility. The self-sacrifice of God and the 
divine self-giving goes on forever in him. 

A little girl on board a steamer on her way to 
Prince Edward Island, said, as the shore drew near, 
" Oh, see ! the island has a brick wall around it." 
The little stranger had mistaken the red soil and 
sandstone for brickwork. So it may seem to some 
that the present statement of the atonement is but 
the brickwork of another theory; whereas, the at- 
tempt has been to describe the atonement as it is in 
actuality. Whether I have succeeded, will be for 
others to say. The atonement might be called " The 
Blessed Isle of Redemption," around which roll 
fathomless oceans of truth, and along whose re- 
sounding shores one may walk, listening to the 
music of the Infinite. 

Ever and anon, in the cycling years, we come to 
Passion Week, Good Friday, and Easter. To three 
places do we make pilgrimage: Gethsemane, Cal- 
vary, and the rock-hewn sepulcher. We linger 
longest where mystery is deepest — at the place 
where he died for us. Turning at length to the 
tomb in the garden, we rejoice because it is empty, 
and thereby the world filled with the presence of 
the risen Saviour. To-day all lands are more than 
ever agleam with the glory of the Living Lord. 
Listen! He is calling us away from his empty 
sepulcher to repeat the angels' toil, and roll from 



344 The Living Atonement 

human hearts the stone of unbelief in the crucified 
yet risen Redeemer, the living atonement. 

'T is from your hearts, beloved, that the stone is rolled 

away ; 
The life for all men given pulses in your life to-day; 
The banners of love's marching host are to the breeze 

unfurled ; 
And the dawnlight of the kingdom is streaming down the 

world. 



INDEX 



Absolute, and relative, 271. 
Abstractions: in the Trinity, 99; 

in sin and atonement, 173. 
Ascension of Christ, its meaning, 

275, 279. 
Atavism, theological, 14, 74. 
Attention, marks the stages of 

theological advance, 5, 6, 12. 
Atonement: the organizing idea 

of Christianity, 59, 62, 88; 

definition of, 167, 168, 171, 

201; Christ its substance, 75, 

180, 196. 

Bible: its criticism, 24, 25; its 
authority, 44; its revelation of 
atonement, 187, 196. 

Business, cursed by sin, 135. 

Character, saved by the atone- 
ment, 325. _ 

Children, their salvation, 292. 

Christ: his place in theology, 12- 
14. .59-6i ; his authority, 
42; his teaching on sin, 145; 
his Messianic expectation, 177; 
the necessity of the atone- 
ment, 200; our sonship in 
him, 209; the Only Begotten 
of the Father, 211. 

Christianity, definition of, 40. 

Christian^ Science, 268, 269. 

College, its relation to missions, 

Conflict of Christianity, 89. 
Consciousness, its nature, 104, 

106. 
Criticism: its place, 8, 9, 21; its 

danger, 21, 22, 26, 49; its 

value, 21, 25, 46. 

Death of Christ: relation of to 
his life, 172, 180, 183; relation 
to the atonement ; 192, 199, 
274, 290; its meaning, 80, 225, 
232, 259, 302, 343. ' 

Decay of spiritual power, 63. 

Definition, a difficult art, 162. 

Deity: as a term, 93; its creden- 
tials, 121, 129, 130, 340; of 
Christ, 12, 120. 



Devotion to Christ, 61. 

Election, 288. 

Eternal atonement theory, 78. 

Ethics of theories of the atone- 
ment, 72. 

Ethical point of view in the 
atonement, 166, 197, 223, 245, 
286. 

Ethical results of the atonement, 
315. 

Evangelism, a necessity of Chris- 
tianity, 62, 91. 

Experience: its nature, 28, 34; 
its relation to theology, 37, 
55; its reality, 267; its help 
in understanding the atone- 
ment^ 66, 85; its argument as 
to Christ's deity, 119, 120, 
122, 128; essential to ethics 
and religion, 283. 

Faith: its relation to _ experience, 
55, 270; its relation to the- 
ology, 11; its relation to rea- 
son, 124; its relation to the 
atonement, 299, 313, 317; in 
Christ, 60, 66; its nature, 298, 

Fatherhood of God, 208. 

Freedom, 333. 

Gethsemane, 224, 226, 247. 

God: his character in relation to 
sm,_ 149, 150, 297, 311; his un- 
divided nature, 193. 

Higher criticism, 24. 

Holy Spirit: in authority, 44; 
imparts God's feeling as to 
sin, 147; place in the atone- 
ment, 277. 

Holiness: nature of, 194; defi- 
nition of, 197. 

Humanity of Christ, 93. 

Idealism: its nature and truth, 
26, 27; its fallacy, 28; needs 
an accompanying realism, 27, 
266. 

Immanence: of God, 276; of the 
atonement, 277. 

345 



346 



Index 



Immortality, 207. 

Intellectual truth: its place in 

theology, 4, 12, 19, 23, 338; 

defined, 47. 
Intemperance, 154. 
Interpretation, its difficulties, 161. 

Language, its difficulty, 161. 

Laymen's Missionary Movement, 
92. 

Law, its nature, 284, 288. 

Life: defined, 225; in relation 
to experience, 283, 326; im- 
parted by Christ, 341. 

Love: and experience, 56; and 
Christ, 66; and theology, 11; 
and faith, 298; is dynamic in 
the atonement, 167; defined, 
293. 

Mediator, Christ, 306. 

Mediation, a necessity of ex- 
perience, 29, 41. 

Messiah, his hope, 177. 

Missions, 62, 91, 316. 

Moral influence theory, 78, 82, 
195, 277. 

Moral law, 207. 

Moral distance, 229. 

Moral nature, 207, 209, 212. 

New theology, 14, 19. 
Noumena, 28, 271. 

Organific idea of Christianity, 

the atonement, 59, 62. 
Obedience to Christ, 62, 315. 

Peace by the atonement, 308. 

Personality: its nature, 107, 109, 
115; of God, 105, 107. 

Personal nature of the atone- 
ment, 75, 178, 189, 199, 342. 

Person of Christ, 94, no. 

Physical, its place and reality, 
265. 

Positive theology: its place, 10; 
its material, 13; its test, 54; 
its experiential nature, 55, 
339; its definition, 57. 

Power of the atonement, 189. 

Pragmatism, 53. 

Prayer: 82, 217; of Christ in 
Gethsemane, 226, 247; on the 
cross, 255. 

Preaching, 5, 17, 339. 

Propitiation, its substance, 179, 
197. 

Realism, 27, 266. 



Reality: its relation to truth, 13, 
47; of the physical, 267; in re- 
lation to the divine, 43. 

Resurrection, 332. 

Revelation: by life, 127; of the 
atonement, 301. 

Revivals, depend on faith in the 
atonement, 64. 

Repentance: relation to forgive- 
ness, 215; test of, 216. 

Righteousness: is basal in the 
atonement, 167, 331; of God, 
194. 

Sacrifice of Christ, 96, 191, 225, 
240. 

Salvation, its principle, 60. 

Satisfaction of Christ, 61, 249, 
307. 

Sentiment, 57. 

Self-consciousness, 105, 332. 

Seat of authority, 36, 37. 

Sin: relation to the atonement, 
135, 286; relation to Christ's 
death, 178, 249, 251, 256; re- 
lation to law, 286 ; defined ac- 
cording to law, 299. 

Sonship in God, 209, 211. 

Social nature: its character, 107, 
114, 209; sin's effect upon, 
155; in relation to the atone- 
ment, 311, 313, 318. 

Spiritual realm: defined, 169; of 
the atonement, 181, 197. 

Speculative criticism, 24. 

Subjective and objective, 28, 34, 
36, 289, 292, 299, 312, 329. 

Theology: defined, 4; its orders, 

4, 6, 14, 17, 19- 
Transcendent, in the atonement, 

276. 
Tritheism, 95. 
Truth: its orders, 3, 13, 58; its 

authority, 48; personal in 

highest form, 3, 14, 75, 181, 

333- 

Unitarianism, 90, 95, 98. 
Unity of the Trinity, 112. 

Virgin birth, 92. 

War, 154, 320. 

Will: its central nature in per- 
sonality, 115; its mediation in 
authority, 41 ; the divine, 235, 
239, 250. 

Withdrawal of the Father, 228, 
232. 



JUL 



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